


Fix Your Eyes On Me

by jinkandtherebels



Series: Western AU [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, M/M, Pining, Western AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-10-07 02:59:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17357663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinkandtherebels/pseuds/jinkandtherebels
Summary: Shisui’s done a fair amount of stupid shit in his life. What can he say? It’s a lifestyle choice.Or, Shisui comes home to find that times have changed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I've been sitting on this first chapter for over a year so in the interest of starting 2019 off right, I figured I should probably post the damn thing!
> 
> But fear not, friends, the whole story's been written at this point! I'm just editing it now, so god willing I won't be leaving you all on any more cliffhangers. Cheers if you've made it this far, and I hope you enjoy the further adventures of Idiot Uchihas: Cowboy Edition!

.

It’s been a long hot day, dry enough that you can taste sand on the back of your throat, but then they’re pretty much all like that out here.

What’s been unusual about today is the _quiet_ , and Hana’s not fool enough to think that’s going to last so she’s bound and determined to enjoy it while it does. Leaning back on the porch of the sheriff’s office, relishing the relative cool of the shade under the roof’s overhang, she stares out at the streets—they’re more or less empty today, church not yet out and anyone not listening to sermons at home fixing whatever passes for a Sunday dinner—and wonders if the Scarecrow’s gotten a shipment of hard candy recently.

The thickness of the air and the uncharacteristic silence in the streets makes her feel tired. Languid, like she’s already dreaming. The thought sounds better and better by the second. Rubbing Haimaru’s furry thick head absentmindedly, Hana lets her eyes slip shut.

And of course that’s when the dog starts growling.

Hana’s eyes fly open, her hand already going to the gun at her hip, but she sees nothing. Someone else would probably assume their pet was snapping at shadows, but Haimaru isn’t Hana’s pet—he’s her partner, and she’s known all her life not to doubt his instincts.

So when he leaps up and bounds off the porch into the blazing hot sun, Hana doesn’t think twice before she follows.

She hears the commotion before she sees it, sneering and jibes, and by then the cause is pretty obvious—it’s those cousins from the outskirts of town, a pair of troublemaking shitkickers who always manage to find new ways to be a collective pain in her ass. There’s a third guy in between them, head down under a wide-brimmed hat like that’s gonna do him a lick of good. Hana’s opening her mouth to shout a warning when the first punch gets thrown, clocking the middle man right in the jaw, and then she finds her voice—and her sidearm—real quick.

“Dosu! Zaku!” she barks. The pair turns around at the sound of her voice as she draws up closer. “I know I’ve talked to you before about starting shit for nothing.” _On a Sunday, no less_ , a part of her wants to say, but they’d probably just laugh at that one. Hell, she’d probably laugh right along with them.

Zaku stops, but he hasn’t wiped that infuriatingly smug little smirk off his face. He’s the one that threw the punch; Hana would be able to guess that much even if she hadn’t seen it with her own two eyes. Zaku’s not much—garden variety shiteater, likes to fuck with authority as far as he’s able to without getting shot, likes to go after unarmed men for the same reasons.

Dosu’s different. He’s the one that’s always sent a trail of goosebumps down Hana’s spine, if she’s being honest with herself, that face all covered in bandages so that you can’t tell what he’s thinking about anything. He’s not much for physical violence, but Hana would bet her most prized pelts that there’re at least a handful of bodies picked clean by scavenger birds that have his name on them.

Neither of them used to be bold or stupid enough to jump people in the middle of the street in broad daylight, but ever since the Fugaku cleared out it feels like it’s been up to everybody else to try and clean up the mess.

“We ain’t starting nothing, Hana,” Zaku protests, the words totally at odds with the smirk still plastered on his dirt-smudged face. “Just havin’ a conversation with an old friend who’s come back to visit.”

“Conversations ain’t usually likely to involve fists,” Hana says flatly. “And that’s Sheriff Inuzuka to you.”

The stranger’s head shoots up at that, enough for Hana to see his face, and then she nearly chokes on her own tongue. Too late she notices Dosu’s one visible eye flickering between the two of them, the cogs turning.

“That’s right, Sheriff,” he murmurs in that fake-soothing voice of his. “We seem to’ve caught you a criminal, haven’t we?”

The hatted man’s eyes meet hers, and Hana curses him with every fiber of her being.

_Goddammit, Shisui, you always did have shit timing._

.

Shisui’s done a fair amount of stupid shit in his life. What can he say? It’s a lifestyle choice.

One perk of that is that he’s used to fear. He’s lived with it more or less every day of his life—the everyday stuff like wondering if rain would come or the supply trains would keep running or some shitkicker fresh out of the saloon would decide today was the day to shoot someone in cold blood just for shits and giggles, all the way up to the big stuff like whether he might, by slipping up somehow, cause the whole damn town to realize he was bent and then string him up for it, law or no law, or whether his ma would come home on any given night. At this point he’s even lived long enough to see both of those big fears come to pass—and somehow here he is. You live this long out here, you learn how to shove all that shit down and shove it down deep, where even you might forget it exists; otherwise you go batfuck, jumping at every shadow until the thought of swallowing a pistol starts to sound like a great alternative.

Shisui hasn’t reached that point, but he thinks it still says something that stepping off that train into the blazing heat of the sun—coming _home_ —is probably the scariest fucking thing he’s ever done.

It’d been weirdly easy getting back here, when all was said and done; the hardest part by far had been deciding to in the first place, and once that was done the rest had fallen into place with suspicious straightforwardness. Shisui briefly thought about utilizing his oldest skill—sticky fingers have never steered him wrong yet—but somehow it didn’t feel right, taking from the place that’d been his shelter for so long. Even if Mizuki was a piece of work.

So he’d used his second oldest skill, found a sketchy-looking man from some sketchy-looking parts of town, and traded his pistol for a handful of cold hard cash. From there it’d been a short trip to the train station. The man behind the glass took his bills, passed him a ticket and that was that.

He’d meant to sleep on the train. It hadn’t happened, obviously, Shisui doesn't know what the fuck he was thinking. He didn’t know what the fuck he was thinking when he got on that train without having any kind of plan about what would happen when he reached the end of the line. He would say he didn’t know what the fuck he was thinking when he decided to go back to begin with, but…

But that’d be a barefaced lie. Shisui knows why he’s going back.

It’s not a smart idea. Hell, he’s pretty damn sure it’s not a _good_ idea, in any sense of the word. He doesn’t even have a plan for what he’s gonna say when he finds Itachi—if he finds Itachi. If the sheriff hasn’t up and left already, slipped right through Shisui’s hands like so much desert sand.

If he doesn’t have a pretty dark-haired wife on his arm by the time Shisui gets to him.

So yeah, no plan, no backups, no safety nets of any kind and almost no hope any of it’s gonna work out. Good thing Shisui’s never let that kind of thing stop him.

He still stands frozen for a minute after getting off the train, though. Long enough that anyone paying attention would probably think he was _trying_ to get his brains fried, if they hadn’t already. He can’t help it; there’s too many feelings kicking the shit out of each other—the good feeling that comes with setting foot on your own ground after an absence, the unease at not knowing whether you’re safe there anymore and, if not, where and how the danger will show up.

It comes pretty quick, matter of fact, though maybe not as quick as Shisui was expecting. The wrath of God, he’s heard, tends to come on like a lightning strike (sometimes literally) on the heads of sinners, but maybe God was just trying to lull him into a false sense of security, because he’s made it all the way to town before Dosu and Zaku jump him.

“Hey there, friend,” Zaku is saying, but Shisui’s already stopped listening. He knows how this goes.

They’re cousins, he knows that much, though you can’t really tell much from looking—same eyes, maybe, dark and about as friendly as a sandstorm, but Dosu’s covered head to toe in bandages so there’s not much to parse out there. Zaku’s easier, his face in full view, which is more than enough to tell he’s just another brash idiot. Shisui knows how to recognize his own.

But they usually stay out on the outskirts of the town, which is where Shisui likes them, and he’s pretty damn sure the rest of the people here feel the same way. They’re nothing but trouble, those two.

So now Shisui’s back to wondering about divine judgment. Especially as he’s picked a real shitty time to be unarmed.

“Holy shit, look who’s back after all,” Zaku says with sudden recognition, snapping Shisui out of his thoughts. “Thought you were never gonna show your face again in this town, Shisui.”

“Missed your fine company,” Shisui says back, cool as he can be. “City folks just ain’t quite the same.”

“You can say that again,” Zaku sighs. “Gotta say, I was gettin’ real sick of their type havin’ free reign to run this town. Outsiders, all of ‘em.”

 _You don’t show your face on these streets unless it’s to steal shit, who the hell are you to talk about outsiders?_ Shisui keeps his face blank though; he really doesn’t like the way Dosu is watching him. And he is watching, make no mistake; there’s a big difference between watching and just plain looking, and Shisui learned to tell the two apart a long time ago. Could save your life, that skill.

“Not sure I get your drift,” is all he says. Zaku shrugs.

“Fugaku was a prick, I know you ain’t gonna argue with that one. ‘Specially since he always seemed to want you strung up in particular.” He grins. “But he didn’t fuck around, I’ll give ‘im that. Almost salty enough to make you forget he wasn’t from around here. Liked the rules too much, yeah, but maybe in another couple years we could’ve dragged him ‘round to our way of thinkin’.”

 _Gotten your ass dragged out of town by a horse, more like_ , he thinks.

“But then his kid…” Zaku whistles. Shisui tries his damndest not to stiffen up; just because Dosu’s silent as the proverbial grave don’t mean it wouldn’t be a huge mistake to forget he’s there. “What kinda rod did he have shoved up his ass?”

Part of Shisui immediately wants to make a bad joke because that’s just who he is, timing and situational awareness be damned, but then the past tense registers and Shisui’s self-control slips for long enough that he blurts out, “The fuck do you mean _did_?”

He figures out his mistake pretty much immediately, not that it helps him one goddamned bit when Zaku starts to smile like he won the damn lottery.

“What’s your stake in it, Shisui? You two have some business?”

“Just behind the times, that’s all,” Shisui says, wrangling his voice back down to a normal volume. “He hand over the reins to someone else?” _Did he marry her? Move back to the city under Fugaku’s thumb and I just missed him all this time?_

_Did he get his stupid ass killed when I wasn’t here to stop him?_

Zaku shakes his head. “You really are behind the times. Don’t even know there’s a new sheriff in town.”

There’s a feeling like cold water trickling down the back of Shisui’s neck. “What are you talking about?”

“Fugaku’s kid is _gone_ ,” Zaku snaps, apparently sick of the whole game. “An’ nowhere you’re gonna be able to follow.”

“Don’t be hasty, Zaku,” Dosu’s gravelly voice murmurs— _close_ , Shisui thinks, _too close_ , but the realization is dull and muted by what’s probably shock—“There’s always a way.”

Shisui hits the ground before he even realizes he’s been hit, pain blooming like an ugly-ass flower over the side of his face where Zaku just suckerpunched him. Squinting up against the desert sun Shisui catches an eyeful of silver glinting at Dosu’s side—knives being much quieter than gunfire—and on instinct he fists his fingers in the sand, heart pounding in his ears; maybe if he blinds one of them he can get a leg up on the other—

“Dosu! Zaku!”

They both turn around and Shisui takes the chance to haul ass to his feet—and no further than that, apparently, because there’s someone pointing a gun in his general direction.

_Itachi?_

But then Shisui’s brain catches up with his stupid pounding heart and points out that no, the long dark hair and the hat don’t mean shit against the obviously female voice. The person with the gun is a woman.

Which just raises a whole bunch of other questions.

He’s barely paying attention as the cousins try to explain themselves, too fixated on the woman herself. Her back’s to the sun so he can’t see her face, but the star-shaped badge on her vest glimmers and it’s making him feel queasier than Zaku’s punch did.

_Not dead, not dead, they’re lying pieces of shit, he can’t be—_

“That’s Sheriff Inuzuka to you,” the woman snaps, and Shisui snaps right back to reality.

Their eyes meet and once the shock clears off her face, Hana Inuzuka looks like she wants to kill him herself.

Dosu is saying something about Shisui being a criminal, about him and his dumbfuck cousin performing a ‘civic service’ or some shit similar, but Shisui’s attention is already torn eight different ways. The badge on her chest, the massive snarling dog at her side, big enough to make anyone think twice if the gun didn’t do it for them. The old friend he hasn’t seen in ages.

The woman who’s probably gonna arrest him now.

Shisui didn’t exactly give her a choice, strolling in like this, he thinks with a little twinge of guilt. He wonders how long she’s been running this town—and there’s the prickling of fear again to go with the guilt, what the _fuck_ happened to the last sheriff?—and just how much she can afford to lose.

 _Not that much_ , Shisui knows, watching her face settle into something cool and determined. _Not on me_.

“Dosu,” Hana says, “the ever living fuck are you talking about?”

Shisui blinks. Zaku blinks. Dosu probably blinks, not that anyone else would be able to tell if he had.

“Come again?” Dosu asks.

“You heard me,” she says. “You’re going on about a criminal and all I see’s an idiot with a head full of sand who finally up and came back home.”

At this point Shisui’s pretty sure that he must’ve taken a wrong turn someplace. Wandered out into the desert without any supplies and now he’s dying there and hallucinating before he goes.

“You sure about this, Sheriff?” Dosu is saying, real quiet, and Shisui’s instincts might not be as great as he thought they were but there’s no way to mistake the silk in that voice. Like a spider spinning a web.

Hana’s no fly though. She’s a damn black widow if Shisui ever met one, and she looks Dosu right in the eye.

“Why? You got something else you feel a burning need to say? I’m listening.” Her hand hasn’t left her holster.

The cousins, meanwhile, had panicked when she showed up and put their knives away real quick. Meaning they’re short on the draw by a long shot, would be even if they’d kept cooler heads; no way in hell a little silver blade beats a Winchester without some divine intervention.

And that’s even without taking Haimaru and his eight thousand teeth into consideration.

It’s obvious the second defeat settles in. Dosu’s posture goes stiff and Zaku, predictably, opens his big mouth.

“So this is what the law means ‘round here now, huh?” He spits into the sand. Haimaru growls. “Guess that’s what comes of havin’ a fucking woman running the—”

“Careful, Zaku,” Hana says, her voice barely less of a growl than the dog’s. “You might wanna go get yourself a drink before that heatstroke fucks with your head any more than it already has.”

And see, Zaku’s always been the one person in town Shisui felt like he could point to and say that while he, Shisui, might be stupid, at least he wasn’t—you know. _That_ stupid. So when Zaku looks like he’s gonna move forward, making Shisui reach on automatic for a gun that ain’t been there in a while now, he’s not really surprised.

But stupid people never make it this long out here without somebody smarter looking out for them, so when Dosu sticks an arm out to stop his cousin ending up with a bullet between the eyes or a fang-shaped chunk ripped out of someplace important, that’s not really a surprise either.

“You have a good rest of your Sunday, Sheriff,” Dosu murmurs, nodding at Hana. “I’ll make sure he drinks up.”

Hana’s hand doesn’t leave her holster. “Not too much, now, you hear? I don’t want to be hearing about any…incidents later on.” Her eyes are sharp. “It is the Lord’s day, after all.”

“Of course,” Dosu says, and all but drags Zaku off by the arm. Shisui’s real hopeful that they have their own stash of whiskey in whatever cave they’re inclined to call home and won’t be bothering Anko tonight.

They’re barely out of sight before Hana rounds on him. At least her hand’s off the gun.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she asks, cool as anything, like this was a conversation they were already in the middle of before Zaku and Dosu interrupted.

“Suicidal impulses flare up every now ‘n again, and I’m only human,” Shisui replies, matching her ease for ease and hoping it’s mostly a joke. “How’ve you been doing, Hana? Haven’t seen you around in—”

“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘a dog’s age’ I will shoot you here and now.”

Shisui puts up his hands in surrender. He don’t feel much for fooling around at the moment anyway; now that the immediate threat of getting knifed and/or shot full of holes is out of the way, he’s only got one other reason for his heart to be pounding like it is.

“So how’d you end up running this shithole?” he asks, trying to sound casual even with his heartbeat in his throat.

Hana doesn’t say anything at first, just squints up at the cloudless sky with an expression like she’s churning butter in her head, and part of Shisui wants to snap that this ain’t the time for daydreaming.

“Come on,” she says right when Shisui’s nerves are about to snap in half. “You look half-dead and I need a drink. There’s stuff in my office.”

 _Her_ office.

Shisui’s got nothing else to do but follow.

.


	2. Chapter 2

.

Itachi’s not dead. That’s the important thing, when all’s said and done.

Shisui might be reminding himself of that a lot, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

He brushes Flicker down with even, careful strokes, like that’ll convince the horse to forgive Shisui for abandoning him all this time—no matter that Itachi apparently looked after him once Shisui disappeared, no matter that Shisui’s never gonna have the chance to thank him for that or for anything else.

With every swipe of the brush Shisui runs back over what Hana told him. She was thoughtful enough to pour them both a glass of whiskey first, at least.

“Itachi was recalled about two months after you…left,” she’d said, diplomatic like. “Fugaku sent for him. I figured the news got back to him one way or the other, that his kid lost control of a felon or something of the like, but all Itachi said was that he had to go home and get married. Face the music.”

Shisui ignored the twist in his gut at that. “So how’d you get mixed up with it all?” he asked.

“I just missed your escape, as it turns out. Ma and I came back from a supply run and walked smack into a shitstorm. Everybody was real tense, wondering what’d happened with the jailbreak and what the hell they were gonna do with a sheriff who couldn’t keep his own prisoners in line.”

Shisui’s fingers twisted into his pants hard enough to bruise the skin underneath.

“Itachi probably figured he could use some extra hands,” Hana was saying. “As it happened I was lookin’ for a change of pace myself, since Kiba’s more than old enough to start helping Ma and Pa with the runs, so when Itachi offered me the deputy badge I took it.”

She hadn’t said anything more about that, but even with all the thoughts spinning through his head fast enough to make him dizzy Shisui could still appreciate what a masterstroke _that’d_ been. Hana’s got a natural talent for the lawman’s job, seems to him, but it don’t hurt that she’s one of them and always has been. The mountaineering Inuzukas and their big smelly dogs’ve been part of this town’s landscape for as long as there’s been a town; their supply runs keep everyone afloat some winters. That counts for a lot. Itachi was probably doing damage control, trying to get back some of the trust he lost when he let Shisui slip through his hands.

And then if that didn’t work, or if something happened—like if his fucking bad penny of a father whistled and expected Itachi to come running—then at least he’d be leaving behind a sheriff who gave more shits about enforcing the law than they did about drinking and whoring. Two birds, one stone. Shisui probably would’ve felt impressed if he hadn’t been so numb.

“And?” he’d asked, when Hana stopped talking.

“And nothing,” she’d said. “Haven’t heard a damn thing from him in months. I was figuring he’d come back with his wife once all that was done, but if he ain’t back by now…”

She shrugged. “Guess I can’t blame him. Some folks ain’t born for the life out here.”

Shisui’d downed the rest of his whiskey instead of saying anything. Hana’s no priest, she’s not about to judge anyone else for their choices, but it’d still felt too close to calling Itachi weak for Shisui’s liking.

At least nobody else took up residence in the stables while Shisui was gone. That would’ve sucked a big one, seeing as he’s got no place else to go. And Hana’s been looking after Flicker since Itachi left, so that’s something too. All things considered, this is going easier for Shisui than he would’ve thought.

So why does he still feel like shit?

Flicker’s coat is shiny now. It’s put him in a forgiving mood, apparently, because he nudges Shisui gently with his big soft nose like he’s saying _welcome home_.

It almost makes Shisui want to cry, stupid as that sounds. He buries his face in the horse’s mane and stays there until the feeling passes him by.

.

Anko doesn’t waste time when Shisui walks into her saloon; two seconds after he walks in the door she makes like she’s gonna vault over the bar and take his head off with her teeth, other customers be damned. Shisui puts his hands up as he walks toward her.

“Just remember,” he says, “you’re gonna be the one cleaning my entrails up off the floor.”

“Might be worth it,” Anko grinds out. Shisui notices her knuckles going white around the glass in her hand; she might shatter it at this rate. He leans on the bar anyway.

“You still got my favorite cheap-ass whiskey?” he asks, conversational even though his heart is going a mile a minute. “Those city folks wouldn’t know a good drink if it bit ‘em in the ass.”

The glass cracks. Anko, momentarily distracted, looks down at it and scowls.

“You ain’t shown your face for a year,” she says, the anger quieter than Shisui’d expected, which just makes it scarier. “A _year_. No word before or since, no letters, no—not so much as a note saying ‘hey, Anko, remember me? It’s Shisui and I’m a dumbass but I ain’t dead yet!’”

Her voice rises on the last few words, only Shisui doesn’t realize just how loud it’s gotten until he starts feeling every eye in the place on his back. There ain’t many people here this early, it’s half the reason he came, but the ones who are here have sure as hell pegged him now.

Anko notices it too, and they all know the second she does, because suddenly she’s breathing fire at everybody _but_ Shisui.

“The fuck are you staring at? You got something to say?”

There’s a general mumble and some clearing of throats. Anko glares around the room.

“I hear a word out of any of you that ain’t asking for another round and you’re gonna be out on your ass, swear to God Almighty. It’s two in the goddamn afternoon and I’m not in the mood.”

More mumbling and scraping of chairs, followed by the loudest silence Shisui’s ever heard in a saloon in his life. At least he doesn’t feel like he’s being skinned alive by a bunch of prying eyes anymore; when he chances a look sideways it looks like everybody is focusing pretty damn intently on the contents of their glasses. Shisui sympathizes.

Anko lets out a long breath. She’s set down the cracked glass and the cleaning cloth and her color’s gone down a bit, though not by much.

“Out back,” she says. “Now.”

Shisui follows her as she moves out from behind the bar and through a small door in the back of the building. (She doesn’t worry about leaving the place unattended; Anko’s got to be the only barkeep in the West—or anywhere—whose customers are more terrified of her than tempted by free booze.)

There’s no one in sight behind the saloon, which at least gives Shisui some privacy while he’s having a new asshole torn.

“So where the hell have you been?” Anko demands.

“The city.”

“No fucking shit. _Where_ in the city? What’ve you been doing?”

Shisui almost makes a joke about how she’ll make a great ma someday, but then decides he still values his skin. “Found a bar by the station. I threw people out when they got too rowdy, and they let me sleep in a hatbox upstairs.”

Anko looks at him, suspicious. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“What about—” She stops.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says. “Just a dumb thought.”

Shisui nudges her. “Thought you didn't have those.”

Anko folds her arms, scowling again. “Look, if I’m wrong you can tell me to fuck off, all right?”

“Hey now, I actually like havin’ all of my teeth in one place.”

She doesn’t bite, just gets straight to the point: “Were you fucking the sheriff?”

It kinda feels like she’s pulled a knife on him. Shisui hears himself blurt out the old standby. “The hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t pull that shit with me,” she snaps. “Even if you weren’t fucking him you had a—a _thing_ for him. How long’ve I known you, Shi? You can’t get away with shit as far as I’m concerned.”

The look on her face is as sure as Sasuke’s had been— _how long have you been fucking my brother?_ Makes Shisui think real hard about how many people have seen through him and he didn’t even notice.

He takes a deep breath. It’s Anko, he reminds himself. She ain’t about to set the vultures on him.

“I’m sorry,” he forces out, though he can’t quite look her in the eyes. “You shouldn’t’ve stuck up for me in there. Won’t look too good for you, right?”

Since he’s staring down at the dirt he can’t dodge when she smacks him hard upside the head. Shisui looks up real quick then, wincing as his hand comes up to see if his skull’s caved in.

“You’re a dipshit,” Anko says coolly. “Those idiots were startled, is all. Not every day the prodigal son comes home.” Shisui opens his mouth and is barreled right over, as usual. “Even if there were rumors back then—and I ain’t saying there were any—it’s been a year. You really arrogant enough to think we’d still be talking about you after all this time?”

Her quirked eyebrow, the dry tone—it’s like home is hitting him all at once, sharp edges wrapped around loyalty stronger than a sandstorm. Shisui ducks his head again, relief making him feel more than a little wobbly.

“I should’ve written you,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, you should’ve,” Anko says. “But that’s not why you’re a fucking moron.”

“Then why’m I a fucking moron?” Shisui asks, dry.

She reaches over and whacks him again, but it’s more gentle this time, which for Anko means something.

“For not thinking you still had friends here,” she says in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.

It takes a second for Shisui to blink away the burning behind his eyes. When he does lift his head and is opening his mouth to apologize, or thank her, or something, Anko turns around and cuts him off again.

“Now we’re gonna go back inside, and I’m gonna charge double for your ‘cheap-ass whiskey’ for making me be nice to you. _Then_ you’re gonna tell me how much better my drinks are than whatever swill they forced down your throat in the city. I’m expecting all kinds of detail.”

“I won’t even make up half of it,” Shisui promises, and Anko smirks at him over her shoulder.

“Good to have you back, Shi.”

.

.

“You want me to _what_?”

Hana’s looking at him like Shisui’s being an idiot, which ain’t new or anything, but it doesn’t seem fair in this case. Shisui’s the one acting normal. _Hana’s_ the one trying to make batfuck crazy ideas sound reasonable.

“Don’t see why you wouldn’t accept,” she says. “You can’t just hang around the saloon forever.”

“Hey, I’m makin’ myself useful,” Shisui protests. “Throwin’ people out if they get too excitable, that’s a real useful skill.”

Hana rolls her eyes. “In any other saloon in the country, yeah, it would be. Anko’s place almost never has any trouble, and you know why that is?” Shisui doesn’t have a chance to answer. “It’s because she’s ten times more threatening than you, or me for that matter. Face it, Shisui, she’s keeping you on as a kindness.”

Shisui barely manages to keep from hunching in his chair, like a troublemaking kid called out in the schoolroom. “Don’t need to be so blunt about it,” he mutters.

“If it’ll make you see sense,” Hana replies. “I need a deputy. You need a job. Simple as that.”

Shisui wonders how many times a man’s world can turn upside-down before he forgets which way was up in the first place. Shisui of the notoriously sticky fingers, a lawman? His ma is up in Heaven somewhere laughing her ass off.

“You got other deputies,” he points out, stalling.

“Deputies, but no right-hand man. They do their jobs, sure, but most of ‘em are holdovers from Fugaku’s day. They put up with Itachi because he was enough his father’s son to suit them.” Hana’s mouth twists up, sardonic. “But I’m no man, and it doesn’t help that some have daughters my age. They’re not _my_ men. I slip up, I don’t trust them not to play vulture with the corpse of my short-lived career.”

Well ain’t that a pretty thought. Shisui pulls a face. “An’ you somehow got to thinking that bringing an ex-convict on board would help your image any?”

“Ain’t about image,” she says. “It’s about trust. And anyway, strictly speaking you weren’t convicted of anything.”

That part’s true enough, at least. Shisui’d half expected to walk right back into his jail cell the minute he got off the train, but since Hana’s stuck her neck out for him nobody else seems willing to try anything. Maybe Anko was right; maybe he was thinking overhighly of himself to think people would really give a shit after so long.

Of course it don’t hurt that Aaron, the deputy who caught him red-handed in the first place, apparently disappeared from town not long after Shisui did. Shisui doesn’t know why and he sure as hell ain’t about to ask. Gift horses and mouths.

“Look,” Hana is saying. “I won’t twist your arm, Shisui. If you wanna keep staring a hole in the window at Anko’s then that’s your business. Guess I thought you might want more than that.”

Shisui might’ve gotten pissy about that once, he thinks, her acting like she knows what’s good for him. But in all fairness, he hasn't exactly proved he’s the best at knowing what’s good for himself.

Besides, she’s not wrong. Shisui hasn’t put it in writing or anything, but he’s known for a while now that his thieving days are done. One close encounter with the noose was enough for him to decide he ain’t real keen on a second. And though he’d rather swallow a cactus whole than admit it, stealing shit has kinda lost its shine without Itachi getting on his case for it.

It’s been strange, these past few weeks. People look at him—or ignore him—more or less the same as they did before everything happened; Anko still pours him drinks and hits him if she thinks he’s not appropriately grateful, the Scarecrow with his half-masked face still spooks the shit out of him every time he goes into the general store, and he still goes to sleep every night looking at the stars through the missing slats in the stable roof, listening to Flicker and the other horses breathe noisily somewhere below.

It should feel normal but mostly it’s just made Shisui feel lost. It’s like he’s ended up right back where he started—as if Itachi never waltzed into his life, or anyone else’s, at all. And it’s forced him to face the fact that maybe his last gamble ain’t going to pay off: Itachi’s in the wind, and it’s not like Shisui can go back to the city and wander the streets asking around for the family Uchiha.

So what’s he going to do? Keep staring out windows like he’s waiting for somebody who’s probably never coming back?

Maybe he does need a change. And to give Hana her credit, he can’t think of a bigger change than this.

He leans back in his chair and groans. “Guess I can’t say I don’t owe you,” he says.

Hana shrugs, but she’s starting to smile. “That’s a true fact.”

“I still got one question, though.” Shisui leans forward again, one perk coming to mind. “This mean I get one of those shiny badges?”

“Depends,” Hana retorts. “You gonna work for it?”

.


	3. Chapter 3

.

_Four months later_

.

Shisui might not speak Horse, but it don’t take a genius to figure that Flicker’s pretty pissed about this situation. Shisui reaches down to pat his neck in what he likes to think is a bracing kinda way.

“I know, boy,” he says. “We’re almost there.”

Flicker makes a snuffling noise that sounds, to Shisui’s ears, like the horse equivalent to some impressive four-letter words. Shisui pats him again.

“I’m gonna feed you so many sugar cubes when we get back,” he promises. “Just think of the sugar cubes.”

The horse makes another pissy-sounding noise but he quiets down after that, which Shisui figures means the bribe worked. Now he just has to remember to make good. Now that he’s making decent enough money to afford shit like sugar cubes without stealing them, it’s not like he’s got an excuse not to.

He doesn’t blame Flicker for being in a shitty mood; it’s hotter than the Devil’s own asshole out here, and Shisui’s saying that as someone who grew up in a damn desert. You’d think nobody in their right mind would be willing to leave their home in heat like this, let alone try to rob an incoming supply train, but then again nobody ever flattered bandits as having an overabundance of brains.

They’ve been having some issues with dipshits of that type lately, probably some new gang trying to make a name for themselves, or at least that’s Hana’s thinking. But holding up stray stagecoaches is one thing; Shisui’s of the opinion that if you’re dumb enough to go flaunting your cash anywhere near a place like this, you deserve to be relieved of it (though that’s not a very lawman-like thought, so he keeps it to himself). It’s another thing to hit the suppliers coming in from the city, the ones who help keep this town running.

Shisui doesn’t give a shit if these brigands haven’t dropped their balls yet; you don’t turn on people who are barely scratching out a living as it is.

So here he is, as directed by Hana, on a mission to guard the suppliers en route from the train station to the town. It ain’t a short journey, which makes for a long day, and at this point Shisui’s almost hoping the bandits’ll be stupid enough to try and jump them anyway. It’d liven things up, at least.

Then again, it’s still awful hot. Shisui reaches for his canteen and takes a sip, though his instinct is to guzzle. When he first started doing patrols like this he used to only take a drink when he felt like he couldn’t stand the thirst anymore. Then he’d nearly gotten himself dead from heatstroke in the first two weeks, prompting Anko to point out that it’d be ironic as hell if his endurance ended up turning him into food for the carrion birds. So now he drinks on a regular schedule, whether he feels like it or not.

The train station’s finally coming into view, thank God Almighty, and Shisui starts talking to Flicker again—encouraging things about how they’re gonna have at least a little bit of a break once they get to the station. Maybe even a speck of shade, and don’t that sound better than a dozen sugar cubes right about now.

The conductor’s just getting off by the time Shisui gets up to the side of the train, having left Flicker tied up in the little pool of shade. Tenzin looks wary until he sees the badge, and then he relaxes. Amazing what a little piece of metal can do.

Shisui tips his hat anyway for good measure. “Afternoon.”

“Afternoon, Deputy,” the conductor says, and being addressed like that will never stop being strange to Shisui’s ears. “What can I do for you?”

“Other way around today,” Shisui says. “I’m escortin’ the supply line back to town. Sure I don’t need to tell you we’ve been havin’ problems around these parts lately.”

The older man’s face darkens. “I’ve heard that. Lord willin’, some of the new folks they’ve sent to Washington will put some funds toward getting more lawmen hired.”

Shisui snorts before realizing it probably ain’t professional. Oh well. “Not likely, Tenzin. You know well as I do that we’re on our own out here.”

The conductor shakes his head ruefully. “Well, at least you’re looking out for your own,” he says. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the lead supply man…”

Shisui’s nodding and smiling and opening his mouth to say something, keep the conversation going, when he sees something out of the corner of his eye—a flash of dark hair.

Millions of people have dark hair. He’s learned not to jump at it every time, so Shisui will never know why he turns around right then, but he does.

The man’s hair is short, cropped just above his shoulders. His back is to Shisui. He’s walking away, but Shisui stops moving as Tenzin walks on ahead, oblivious.

 _It’s not_ — The usual words start beating in his head like a drum, in time with his suddenly pounding heart; _it’s not, it’s not, it’s not_ —

“I—” His throat is too dry. “Itachi?”

The other man stops moving too. He doesn’t turn around, but Shisui’s heart is up in his throat now and he just _knows_.

Neither of them so much as twitch. Shisui feels like he’s rooted to the ground.

“Look at me,” he hears himself say. “Just—just look at me, okay?”

The other man doesn’t answer. But slowly, so fucking slowly, he turns around.

Itachi looks almost as thunderstruck as Shisui feels.

“Shisui,” he says. Then, dazed-sounding, “What are you doing here?”

“Could ask you the same thing,” Shisui manages, impressed at the way his mouth keeps working even though his brain is going in eighteen different directions. “Only I’d wanna know where the hell you’ve _been_.”

Itachi is shaking his head. “You weren’t supposed to be here,” he says slowly. “You were supposed to be gone. Why did you come back?”

There’s an edge to his voice and when Shisui realizes what it is, it’s almost fucking funny. “Are you—are you actually _pissed_ at me?”

“You got out,” Itachi snaps, and yeah, he’s pissed all right. “You escaped. You said they would kill you if you—”

“Well, they didn’t,” Shisui snaps back. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

He doesn’t even know why he says it. Itachi moves like he’s gonna close the distance between them, like he wants to deck Shisui the same way he did last time they saw each other, but he stops himself, hands clenched at his sides.

“Do not say that to me,” he says, dangerously quiet.

“Deputy?”

Shisui turns around to see Tenzin looking between him and Itachi with concern.

“Is there a problem?” he asks, about the same time Itachi says “ _Deputy_?” with what Shisui’s got to admit is probably the right amount of shock.

“No problem here,” Shisui says. “Just ran into an old friend, that’s all.”

He knows the word stings more than it should.

“I see,” Tenzin says, and if he’s got any more thoughts on the subject he doesn’t share them. “Well, I’ve settled things with the suppliers, so you oughta be good to go. Pleasure as always, Deputy.”

“Same to you.”

The conductor glances between them one more time, probably trying to figure the chances of a shootout happening on his watch, before turning and heading back to his train. Shisui won’t be surprised if it departs a little earlier than normal today.

And that just leaves Shisui, Itachi, and the tumbleweeds blowing on by.

“You cut your hair off,” Shisui says at last. It’s the only thing he can think to say that sounds more like a peace offering than an interrogation.

Itachi’s eyebrow disappears under the brim of his hat. “Deputy?” he says, pointedly.

Shisui shrugs. “Hey, you’ve been gone a while. Times change.”

“Then Hana Inuzuka is still in charge?” Itachi presses.

“What, you’re sayin’ nobody else could’ve seen past my rugged exterior to my natural talent?” At Itachi’s unimpressed look, he caves. “Yeah, Hana’s running the show. Doin’ a pretty damn good job of it, too.”

Itachi’s expression doesn’t change, but some of the tension seems to go out of him. “Good. I was afraid that the…manner of my leaving may have compromised her authority. It seems those fears were unfounded.”

And Shisui’s opening his mouth to say _yeah, about that ‘manner of leaving’_ when someone behind him clears his throat. Shisui turns around to see a skinny guy who’s probably the supplier Tenzin mentioned. Which in turn reminds Shisui that he’s got a job to do here.

“Be with you in a second,” he says, and the other guy frowns but he takes the hint and backs off. Shisui turns back to Itachi.

“So?” he says, more casual than he feels. “You comin’ back with us?”

“I have nowhere else to go,” Itachi replies.

It sounds all calm and measured when he says it, but all the same Shisui can’t help thinking that that shows a real stunning lack of options.

.

They make it back into town without incident, which in his thinking brain Shisui knows is a good thing. Problem is, the result is a long-ass journey home in a fucking desert heatwave with nothing to think about but the man at the end of their little caravan, riding a borrowed horse and staring ahead, stone-faced.

Shisui’s never been so happy to see his boomtown. Especially since the heat is reaching its nastiest point of the day, meaning there’s nobody out on the streets if they can help it. Harder for rumors to get started that way.

“Keep riding straight and you’ll hit the sheriff’s office,” he tells the head supplier once they’ve crossed into town. “I’ll catch up.”

The guy nods his thanks and he and his people move along, one more little success to add to Shisui’s growing list of them. He’s pretty proud of that list, truth be told, but there are other things on his mind right now.

He half expects Itachi to’ve disappeared by the time Shisui turns back around, but he’s still there.

“We should talk,” he says before Shisui has a chance to. “If you have the time.”

Shisui’s heart gives one painful thud inside his chest. “I gotta go make my report to Hana. Meet you at the stables?”

“I will be there,” Itachi says.

.

It takes less than five minutes for Shisui to make _his_ report, but another twenty minutes are spent twitching in his seat while the skinny head supplier and his posse bemoan the difficulties they had getting their shit all the way out here, the prices that keep going up “back home”—that is, the city—and are making it harder to provide the same amount of “product” to the people “all the way out here”, and on and fucking _on_. Hana keeps her face neutral the whole time, which Shisui could cheer her for because all honesty, around the eighteen minute mark his hand starts twitching in the vicinity of his sidearm.

“We appreciate your efforts, gentlemen,” Hana says, finally cutting him off. “Make sure you have a drink before you go—tell Anko at the saloon it’s on me.”

That gets them all out of her office damn quick. Quick enough that Shisui gives her a round of applause when the door shuts behind them.

“Shut up,” Hana says dryly.

“You’d make a good politician,” Shisui tells her.

“Kindly never insult me like that again.” She sighs and reaches down to scratch a sleeping Haimaru’s head. “So? You have anything else to add, or did that sermon more or less cover it all?”

Shisui debates leaving it be, but in the end it’s just as true now as it was four months ago—he owes Hana. At the very least he owes her the respect of hearing the news from him and not from the rumors that’ll be spreading soon.

He sighs. “There’s somethin’ else.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Swallows. “Itachi’s back in town.”

Hana’s eyes widen. “He’s _back_? Since when? Where the hell’s he been all this time?”

“Since about half an hour ago, and as to the rest…” Shisui shrugs. “That’s a real great question.”

The sheriff keeps absentmindedly petting her dog, her other hand over her mouth like she’s thinking hard.

“Where is he now?” she asks.

“Stables, probably.” Shisui tries to sound nonchalant. “He’ll be wanting to keep his head down, I’m guessin’. At least for now.”

“You think he’s planning to stay?”

He shrugs again. “Don’t seem like he’s got much of a choice.”

Hana curses under her breath. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy as anyone he’s not in a vulture’s belly somewhere but…this puts me in an awkward fucking position, Shisui.”

“I know.” And he does get that much, at least. Hana might’ve started out as interim sheriff, but she’s held the position for a time now. She is _the_ sheriff as far as most here are concerned. Given how most lawmen leave their profession (that is, in a long black box), it ain’t exactly a common problem for the last sheriff to show up while his successor is still kicking. Especially given the way Itachi left in the first place—called back by his daddy, having let a jailed prisoner slip loose; it’s not as much of a disgrace as it would’ve been if he’d just plain let Shisui go, but the fact that Shisui got the drop on him couldn’t’ve looked much better. The thought makes his stomach twist.

“I don’t know what he’s gonna do,” he admits. “Haven’t had the chance to ask yet.”

“Hm.” Hana sounds thoughtful. “You still livin’ in the stables yourself, Shisui?”

“Yeah,” Shisui says. “Why?”

“Gets awful cold up there at night,” Hana says. Her eyes are sharp, too sharp. “Nobody’d begrudge a man looking for warmth when the temperature drops.”

Shisui fights to keep his face as blank as hers. “You implyin’ something untoward, Sheriff?”

It’s hard as fuck to hold Hana’s gaze when she’s fixed on him like that, like she’s rifling through his brain and all of his secrets besides. Shisui’s eyes are starting to water by the time she sighs and leans back.

“Look,” she says. “You’re not half bad as a deputy, and I know you’re smart. All I’m telling you is to keep being smart.”

“I’ll try my best,” Shisui says, feeling disoriented.

“You better,” Hana replies. “Because you’ve got friends, and I like to think I’m one of them, but there’s only so much I can do to help you—either of you—if you make a mess of shit again. Got it?”

Shisui’s quiet for a second, wondering how much she actually knows. How much she might’ve guessed in her time as Itachi’s deputy.

“I get your meaning,” he says at last.

Hana nods. “Then go talk to him,” she says. “And tell our former sheriff not to do anything stupid either.”

.

Shisui rides back in a daze, grateful again that nobody’s out and about. He feels about as anxious as he imagines he would right before a duel.

A light’s on in the stable when he gets there. He gets inside and then drags the heavy door shut behind him with a thud. Now neither of them can bail out.

It’s still a surprise when he turns around and Itachi’s actually _there_ , running his hand down Flicker’s nose like they’re the best of friends. And maybe they kinda are, Shisui realizes.

“Thanks,” he says. Itachi glances over his shoulder to look at him.

“What do you mean?”

“Flicker.” Shisui gestures to his usually taciturn horse, who’s currently acting docile as a housecat. “Hana told me you looked after him while I was gone.”

Itachi looks away again. “It was only for a short time. Hana cared for him far longer than I did.”

“Just take the compliment, Professor,” Shisui says with a sigh. Itachi raises an eyebrow.

“I haven’t heard that nickname in a long time.”

“Yeah, well. Can’t rightly call you Sheriff anymore, can I?”

If the reminder stings at all, Itachi doesn’t let on. “No, I suppose you can’t.”

They linger in silence for a couple minutes, Itachi communing with Flicker and Shisui standing there with no clue what to do with his hands. Naturally, Shisui loses patience first.

“You said we should talk,” he says. “So are we gonna talk or what?”

Itachi looks at him again. “What would you like to talk about?”

Like they’re at some fancy-ass city tea party. Shisui could strangle him. “How ‘bout we start with what the fuck happened to you after—”

“After you concussed me with my own pistol?”

Itachi says it mildly. Shisui still feels a twinge of guilt that he immediately decides to squash.

“If you’re lookin’ for an apology you’ll be lookin’ a long time,” he retorts. “Pretty sure I saved your neck with that stunt.”

A delicate shrug. “It’s possible. Legally there was nothing to be done about my conduct, but in terms of public opinion…well. There were doubts.”

“Not enough for them to justify stringing you up,” Shisui points out.

“That’s true,” Itachi says, but there’s something hollow about it.

Shisui looks away from his face then—maybe he’s not as above things like shame as he likes to believe—and his eyes drift to where Itachi’s hand is still twisted in Flicker’s mane.

Whatever he might’ve been about to say gets caught in his throat. Itachi has his gloves off, giving Shisui a good look at those long-fingered hands.

There’s no wedding ring there.

Itachi follows his gaze and saves him the trouble of having to ask.

“Izumi’s family withdrew from our agreement when they learned what had happened here,” he says in a toneless kinda way. “The relative prestige of marrying a sheriff paled in comparison to the danger of marrying one against whom public opinion had turned. They didn’t want to risk their daughter. I do not blame them.”

“Fuck,” Shisui says. “I’m sorry.” He doesn’t know what else to say.

Itachi sighs. “Don’t be. It was probably for the best.”

He sounds weirdly calm about the whole thing, but Shisui’s betting someone else wasn’t. “How’d Fugaku take it?”

This time Itachi hesitates before he answers.

“Not…well,” he says slowly. “He was already angry that I had managed to ‘throw away’ my reputation in this town so easily. I destroyed what he had worked so hard to build here.” He doesn’t meet Shisui’s eyes. “It is nothing I was not prepared for.”

It ain’t exactly a surprise to hear that Fugaku’s a taskmaster of a father, Shisui could’ve guessed that after spending five seconds with the man, but something about the look on Itachi’s face doesn’t sit right. Shisui blurts the question before he can think about it.

“What’d he do to you?”

Itachi frowns, but Shisui keeps going.

“You’ve been gone for over a year. An’ you said it yourself—you got noplace else to go but here. So you’ve been home all this time, am I right?”

A muscle twitches in Itachi’s jaw. “It was my choice.”

“Like hell it was,” Shisui snaps, the pieces falling together into one ugly picture. “He called you back to rip you a new one and then he didn’t let you leave, did he? That’s why even Hana wasn’t hearing from your micromanaging ass.”

“It was,” Itachi repeats with dangerous calm, “my choice.”

A disbelieving laugh rips its way out of Shisui’s throat. “Did he even let you out of your fuckin’ _room_?”

“ _Enough_.”

Itachi’s hands are clenched at his sides and for a second all Shisui feels is the anticipation of it—those fists hitting his skin and splitting it open, a fight that’ll save him from having to have this conversation. It’s almost like the slow burn in his gut he used to feel before they fucked. All mindless, heady heat.

But then he gets a good look at Itachi’s face, how exhausted he is. Like he’s already been fighting for a long time and if was ever fun for him before it sure as hell ain’t now.

Shisui takes a deep breath, counts to ten, and backs down.

“Okay,” he forces himself to say. “I’ll shut up and listen.”

Surprise flickers across Itachi’s face, but he relaxes some. Shisui exhales.

“You will have heard that the election is finished,” Itachi says.

Shisui nods. “Think Tenzin said something, yeah.”

“My father was among those elected to Congress.”

Shisui stares at him for a long, horror-filled second before the words finish soaking into his brain. Fugaku Uchiha, a fucking politician—Shisui wonders whether the country of his ma’s birth might be willing to take him in if he bailed now.

“As you can imagine,” Itachi is saying, “the news that the eldest son of a potential congressman had been ‘run out’ of his own jurisdiction would have been damaging to my father’s campaign. I was asked to stay home and keep my head down until the election was over.”

“And you went along with him just like that,” Shisui says, flat as a board. Itachi gives him a look.

“Things were said,” he says, diplomatic-like. “We struck on a deal, of sorts.”

“You mean he threatened you.”

Itachi ignores him. “We came to an agreement. I remained out of the public eye until his appointment was confirmed.”

“And now?” Shisui presses. “What’d you get out of all this?”

Itachi smiles a thin smile.

“Freedom,” he says. “My father will never interfere with my affairs again.”

Shisui stares at him. “The hell does that mean, exactly?”

“At the moment, an utter lack of financial support. I will need to find some means of employment here as quickly as possible, assuming someone will be willing to take me on—”

“Wait,” Shisui interrupts. “He _cut you off_?”

“Things were said,” Itachi repeats, but there’s an edge to it. “Things that can’t be taken back. We found we disagreed on certain fundamental issues, and if I cannot carry on his legacy then I am worthless as a son.”

He stops short, like he hadn’t meant to go that far. Shisui squashes the urge to reach for him.

“Those sure as hell ain’t your words,” he says quietly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Itachi replies. He’s started stroking Flicker’s mane again. “This is where I am now. This is _what_ I am now.”

Something about the way he says it damn near breaks Shisui’s heart.

“You got somewhere to sleep tonight?” he asks before he can think about it too hard.

The look Itachi gives him is dry as salt and clear as crystal: _What do **you** think?_ Good to see he hasn’t lost his spunk with everything that’s happened. Shisui takes his hat off and hangs it on a post so he doesn’t have to look Itachi in the eye for a second.

“You can stay here, y’know,” he says. “If you want. The loft ain’t exactly like where you’re used to sleeping, but it’s roomy enough.”

The response to that is silence, long enough that Shisui starts to think maybe he offended Itachi’s pride—maybe he’d rather sleep on a cactus or something. He tries to find something else to do with his hands.

“You never told me,” Itachi says suddenly. “What have _you_ been doing all this time?”

Shisui shrugs. “Did about a year working at a saloon just outside the city. Throwin’ people out, drinkin’ a lot of free whiskey, that kinda thing. It got old after a while; they had me in a room the size of one of these stalls.”

“It was steady work,” Itachi points out. “If you stayed on for so long. What made you decide to leave?”

“Honestly?” Shisui shrugs again. “I missed it here. This is my home, y’know. And I missed—”

He stops, nearly swallowing his tongue once he realizes what he almost said: _I missed you._

Panic shoves a lie out of his mouth instead of the truth.

“I missed Anko’s whiskey,” he finishes, heart hammering.

Itachi doesn't bite. “And that was enough for you to risk coming back?”

Shisui forces a smile. “You got no idea. City folk drink pisswater, you know that? Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves.”

For a second he thinks Itachi’s gonna call him out, but he doesn’t.

“I apologize on behalf of my city-dwelling brethren,” he says instead. “As it seems our inability to make drinkable whiskey has damned us as a populace.”

Shisui pats his shoulder in a friendly way and hopes the relief doesn’t show in his voice. “S’all right. We’re friends, so I ain’t gonna hold it against you.”

.

It’s too small, that word— _inaccurate_ , Itachi would say. Late that night, when he can’t sleep for shit because all he can hear is someone else’s breathing over at the other end of the loft, not close enough but not far enough away either, Shisui wonders what the hell made him say it.

_We’re friends._

Horseshit they are. Shisui doesn’t rightly know what they _are_ , especially now, but _friends_ sure ain’t it.

But what else is there? The best Shisui could’ve hoped for back then, if he were feeling really rosy, would’ve been something like fuckbuddies. Right? There’s not much else. Everything about people like them has to be hard, all edges and sharpness. Softer words—ones like _lover_ —are for men who fuck women and maybe get hitched to them later on.

And that possibility sure as hell doesn’t exist for Shisui, so for him and the girls at the brothel, fuckbuddies is the best they’re ever gonna get.

The thought makes him pissy, and being pissed ain’t exactly helpful when he’s trying to sleep, but he can’t help it.

Because he can try to ignore it all he likes, but Shisui knows damn well he came back for a reason. And what’s the point of it all if he doesn't even have the balls to say that reason out loud?

Itachi sleeps. Shisui doesn’t, and if anyone asks he’ll tell them it was the ex-sheriff’s snoring that kept him up all night.


	4. Chapter 4

.

Dawn seems to come earlier than normal, and Shisui groans out loud when sunlight begins to poke directly through his eyelids.

He gets in his clothes slowly, scoops his badge up and pins it to the front of his vest, yawning the whole time. This early in the day it’s always a choice between moving and thinking, and most days he chooses movement over brain function.

Which is why, when he finally hauls himself down the ladder from the loft and sees Itachi making eggs, Shisui’s first instinctive thought is that he’s finally gone crazy.

“You’re awake,” his delusion says mildly. “Breakfast?”

Shisui takes the offered plate with mute confusion; only when a mug of coffee is passed over and inhaled do the memories of the previous day come back to punch him in the face.

“Fuck,” he blurts. “You’re _here_.”

Itachi pauses, his own bite of egg halfway to his mouth.

“I could hardly afford to run away in the night,” he says. “As we established yesterday, I have nowhere to go.”

Shisui hides his wince behind another sip of coffee, but there’s no bite to Itachi’s words. He just sounds resigned. Shisui feels almost awkward about bringing Hana up now, but it’s a conversation they’ve gotta have at some point so he takes another gulp of coffee and dives in.

“I told Hana you were back last night,” he says. “She, uh—she told me to tell you not to do anything stupid.”

Itachi raises an eyebrow. “And did she happen to clarify what she meant by that?”

Shisui is already sweating. It’s too damn early for this. “Not really. She told me the same, if it makes you feel any better. Think she just means us to be careful how we handle…” He waves his hands awkwardly. _This. You._

“It is a delicate situation,” Itachi says, frowning into his mug. “Perhaps I should begin looking for work. I don’t want to start any rumors about the chain of command changing again.”

Shisui knows he should agree with the plan, because it makes sense. He’s even opening his mouth to say as much when something stops him: a voice in his memory, cold and sneering, and a knife glinting in someone’s belt.

_Gotta say, I was gettin’ real sick of their type havin’ free reign to run this town. Outsiders, all of ‘em._

“Maybe not,” Shisui hears himself say instead.

Itachi looks up. “And why not?”

Shisui looks down at his plate, stirs his eggs around as he answers. “You know how this town works. There were rumors about you comin’ back from the minute you rode into town, an’ those rumors’ll be everywhere by now. Let people get used to that first. Right now, who knows what they’re feelin’.” Zaku’s face flashes in his mind again, and Dosu’s one shrewd eye. “Might be safer to lay low until they’ve got something better to get worked up about.”

When he looks up again, Itachi is looking at him with an unreadable expression.

“I see,” he says at last. “You think I should keep my head down.”

“Just for a little while,” Shisui says. “They’ll figure out somethin’ else to gossip over sooner or later.”

“I see,” Itachi repeats. Shisui doesn’t know what to do with the utter lack of tone in his voice. Maybe he’s still worn out from yesterday; fuck knows Shisui is.

A glance outside tells him he’s got no time to think on it, though. Shisui bolts up and grabs his hat. “Shit, I gotta report to Hana.” He glances sideways at Itachi. “Um—”

Itachi waves him off. “I will occupy myself here.”

Shisui doesn’t know what to say to that, exactly, but he does at least remember his manners because his ma didn’t raise a savage.

“Thanks for the food,” he says. “I normally don’t make stuff this early, so—uh. Thanks.”

Itachi’s expression softens just a little. Or maybe Shisui’s imagining it.

“Do not keep the sheriff waiting,” is all Itachi says.

.

It kinda freaks him out how fast they slide into a routine—Shisui leaves in the morning to go do lawman’s work, whatever Hana says needs doing, while Itachi stays behind and finds ways to keep busy. It doesn’t take Shisui long to notice that each time he comes back to the stables there’s some new _improvement_ that's been made, like Itachi’ll go stir-fucking-crazy if he doesn’t have something to work on every waking second.

(The first time he comes back he finds the horses brushed down, fed and watered and all the tack clean and shiny. That’s a godsend after a long day in the saddle and he tells Itachi so, trying not to sound embarrassingly relieved about it.

The second time it feels like the stable is cleaner, somehow, though he can’t put his finger on why that is. Feels like he’s been visited by fairies in the night and it’s kinda off-putting.

The third or fourth time he realizes what it is: all of his equipment has been moved around just a little, organized in a way that he has to admit makes a lot more sense than his usual method.

And so on.)

They talk, when they’re both in the same place. About the day, or the weather, or whatever else people talk about when they’re trying real hard not to talk about one thing in particular.

And they definitely _don’t_ talk about that.

It ain’t exactly comfortable, Shisui reflects after the first week. Not by a long shot, and it’s frustrating as hell when he lets himself think about it. They used to be easy with each other. They could have actual _conversations_ back when Itachi was behind his desk and Shisui was behind bars and doing his damndest to keep the sheriff from ever finishing his paperwork.

_Well, what’d you expect? You said it yourself—times change._

Yeah, well. Times change, people change with them; that’s fair enough. But Shisui knows damn well that for his part, at least, he’s just edging around something he doesn’t know how to talk about, and he’s got no clue what Itachi’s thinking at all. That’s a real unsatisfactory bitch of a situation.

The fact that he’s starting to feel as bad as Fugaku, keeping Itachi holed up like this, isn’t helping his nerves any.

When Shisui gets back one night and finds that the hay bales are now organized in order of age (how the fuck Itachi figured that out is a question he’s not gonna examine too closely, out of respect for his own sanity) he figures it’s probably time to bring it up.

“You’re losing your shit here, aren’t you.”

Itachi, still sweating from hauling the last bale over his head, wipes his forehead with a sleeve. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Shisui looks real pointedly at the hay bales, then back to Itachi. Itachi at least has the good sense to look sheepish.

“I am used to having work,” he admits. “Doing nothing is difficult for me, but there is not much I can do and still ‘lay low’, as it were.”

There’s no accusation there, but Shisui still feels a little nudge of guilt.

“I get that.” He shrugs out of his vest and hangs it up, the deputy badge glittering. “Truth be told, you probably won’t have to for much longer. There’s always someone lookin’ for more hands out here, you could ask—”

He glances over and trails off. Itachi’s eyes are fixed on Shisui’s badge; he’s obviously not listening to a word Shisui says.

“Sasuke wrote me today,” Itachi says without looking up. Shisui goes with it.

“Yeah? And what’s the little shit up to?”

That gets Itachi’s attention, even if it’s to give Shisui a sharp look for insulting his baby brother.

“He is doing well. He passed the bar exam with flying colors.”

“That’s good, ain’t it?” Shisui says after a second, because it _sounds_ like a good thing, but there’s something off in Itachi’s voice.

Itachi nods. “It is a good thing. He informs me he’s already in the process of drafting local law proposals to make…whatever our father intends to do exceptionally more difficult.”

Shisui’s surprised into laughing. “Like I said. A little shit.”

“Perhaps.” Itachi sighs. “I worried, after I came home. More so after I left it again. I thought that our father’s expectations would all fall on Sasuke since I had proven myself a disappointment. But he seems to be holding his own better than I was ever able to.”

Still in that weird, thoughtful tone, he says, “I am not used to being a useless son.”

Shisui opens his mouth and barely manages to shut it again before anything comes out. He’s getting better at thinking about shit before he goes and says it (something he oughta thank Hana for, probably).

When he’s pretty sure he can talk without yelling, he says, “You said somethin’ like that before. Fugaku say that to you?”

Itachi’s mouth curls at the corner. It’s not a smile. “He did not need to.”

Shisui’s out of his depth here; he’s smart enough to know that much. He doesn’t know jack or shit about the way things work in rich families, city families, families that expect their kids to be lawyers and lawmen and politicians and cut them out of their lives if those kids don’t live up to expectations. He remembers his own ma, how he never really cared too much about being hungry or having no money because she was always _there_ , and he knew down to his bones that she loved him.

Something in him aches thinking maybe Itachi never had that.

Itachi rubs at his forehead. “I’m sorry. You did not ask to hear this. I am just…tired, I think. I will—”

“Don’t apologize,” Shisui blurts out. “Not for shit like this. I—I wanna hear it.”

Itachi immediately comes back with, “Why?”

_Oh, fuck me sideways._

He feels kinda like he just stepped into a trap, but one look at Itachi’s face says he didn’t mean to lay one. He hadn’t been lying about being tired—to Shisui’s eyes, he looks more exhausted now than he ever did hunched over that desk at four in the morning.

And the more he thinks about it, the more Shisui thinks he’s pretty damn tired too. Like he’s been running for so long his lungs are burning with it.

Itachi’s still standing there, waiting, patient as a stone. And careful—he’s left a gap between them, wide enough for Shisui to duck and run if he wanted, and maybe that’s exactly what he expects Shisui to do. God knows Shisui’s never given him much reason to think otherwise.

 _This is stupid_ , he tells himself. _This ain’t the time._

But he remembers how Itachi tried to kiss him, once, and Shisui threw it back in his face. So maybe now it’s Shisui’s turn to do something stupid and brave. He swallows hard.

“I lied to you before,” he says. “When you asked me why I came back.”

“I gathered that much,” Itachi says softly.

Shisui shakes his head. “See, I did some…I guess some fucking soul-searching, the year I was gone, and I thought I could get past everything and just forget it all, but I couldn’t. And it wasn’t—” He has to force the words out. “It wasn’t Anko’s whiskey.”

His mouth is dry. His heart is hammering so hard against his chest Shisui’s pretty sure if he looked down right now he could see it—and maybe he was wrong before, maybe _this_ is the scariest fucking thing he’s ever done in his life, but what the hell. None of it’s killed him yet.

He takes a breath.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he says. “And that scares the shit out of me.”

.

Itachi is silent for what feels like a long time.

Shisui stands there and sweats and bears with it, because Itachi’s been patient with him and he figures he probably oughta repay the favor, but holy _fuck_ is it hard.

When Itachi finally opens his mouth again, the words that come out aren’t what Shisui would’ve expected.

“I believe I knew that already,” he says. Shisui’s mouth falls open.

“The fuck you did,” he manages. “How—”

Itachi tilts his head like he’s thinking about it.

“You aren’t a coward,” he says at last. “But I knew that something had scared you, and it wasn’t the idea of getting caught.”

Shisui stares at him. Itachi stares back, like he’s waiting for his words to soak through Shisui’s apparently thick skull.

“The fuck,” Shisui says, again. There’s no heat in it. “You—you got any clue how _long_ it took me to figure that shit out? And you just—”

The crazy desire to laugh is starting to grab hold of him, and the look on Itachi’s face—like he’s gotten over the surprise and is trying real hard not to start smiling—isn’t helping. Shisui doesn’t see any way he’s getting out of this without making a real obvious dipshit of himself.

So he gives up, moves forward, grabs the front of Itachi’s shirt and kisses him because he’s never wanted to do anything so bad in his whole stupid life.

Itachi’s mouth is soft under his.

It takes about five seconds for Shisui to figure he’s out of his depth again; they haven’t kissed that much, all told, least of all when there’s nothing else scandalous going on. There’s a weird moment where he panics over not knowing where he’s supposed to put his hands now.

And then Itachi brings his own ringless hand up to rest on Shisui’s jaw—careful, like Shisui’s gonna break—and without meaning to Shisui thinks, _lover_.

Things start making more sense to him after that.

He doesn’t know how long they stand there kissing, just kissing, barely moving anything else except when Shisui kinda loses his balance and ends up leaning back against a wall, Itachi pressed warm against him. It feels weirdly easy after everything that’s led up to this, even though part of Shisui feels like they should be rushing to make up for lost time.

Itachi’s clearly in no rush, though, and for once neither is he.

It’s like he’s been asleep this last year and then some, and his body is only now waking up. Shisui’s heart is pounding so loud in his ears he can barely hear anything else, but he _feels_ all of it—the heat when Itachi’s mouth opens under his; Itachi’s fingers gripping tight enough to bruise even through his shirtsleeves; the warmth pooling everywhere they’re pressed together, even if skin isn’t touching skin.

But just because he’s been celibate for a while doesn’t mean Shisui can’t take a hint when the kisses start getting deeper and Itachi presses him harder into the wood slats. Somehow they end up on the floor with Itachi halfway in his lap and at that point something’s gotta be said.

“You tryin’ to give me a hint?” Shisui murmurs around kisses.

Itachi pulls back a little, just enough for Shisui to see control and city-bred manners fighting with lust in those dark eyes, and losing hard.

“If you want,” Itachi says.

Shisui twists his fingers in Itachi’s collar and drags him back in instead of answering outright, and the kisses aren’t soft and slow this time around. Itachi’s fingers drift up and tangle in Shisui’s hair, pulling a little when he feels like Shisui’s not getting the message. The resulting sharpness doesn’t do much to calm him down.

He’s actually gonna complain when Itachi finally drags his mouth away—and ain’t that a new feeling, wanting Itachi’s mouth on his more than anything else—until he realizes Itachi’s putting it to work on the same part of Shisui’s jaw he touched earlier, biting and sucking a line of fire down the side of Shisui’s neck until it’s all he can do not to make some noise and leave whatever’s left of his reputation in the dust.

“Shit,” Shisui breathes, “I missed you.”

Itachi pulls away again, blown-wide pupils making his eyes look entirely black.

“I want you,” he replies.

Shisui’s sure as fuck not about to argue with that.

“I’ve got stuff up in the loft,” he says. “With my sleeping stuff. Uh.” Itachi’s mouth is distracting. “You gotta get off me first, though.” Itachi’s _face_ is distracting.

Itachi blinks slow, like it’s taking him a second to hear what Shisui’s saying. Then all at once he’s on his feet and offering a hand to help Shisui get his ass off the floor.

Shisui takes it.

.

He’s spent more drunk, lonely nights than he’s ever gonna admit picturing what this would look like: Itachi naked and sprawled out under him again, that serious face easy for once because he feels so fucking good, because Shisui can make him feel this good.

(Cooking oil, that fancy olive shit? It’s a hell of a thing. Shisui’s gonna thank the Scarecrow for it on his hands and knees next time they see each other. It makes it so much easier to slide his fingers up inside of Itachi, one at a time, making him moan softly into the blanket—sounds that turn him on all the more because he didn’t think he’d ever hear them again.)

None of his half-asleep daydreams lived up to this, he thinks a couple minutes later (Itachi bent over in front of him on knees and elbows, murmuring things like _yes_ and _now_ ) and somewhere deep down he always knew they didn’t, they never would. It was part of what almost drove him batfuck crazy that year he spent away, knowing he would never have anything this good again.

He moves careful, pushing inside just a little. Even that much is amazing—and then Itachi hisses in a breath and Shisui forces himself to focus.

“You okay?” he manages.

“I…” Itachi clears his throat. “It has been a while.”

Shisui hears, _There hasn’t been anyone else_.

It does something weird to his insides, that thought, and he leans forward to brush his mouth against the ridge of Itachi’s spine.

“I got you,” he says.

He nudges inside a little more before pulling back again. Itachi makes a different noise that time. Shisui tries not to smirk.

“I’ll go slow.”

Slow is different. It’s kind of torture, because there’s still a desperate part of Shisui that wants to fuck Itachi until he screams for it, except now there’s a bigger part that thinks _lover_ so he keeps his cool. Digs his teeth into his bottom lip, sticks to slow, shallow thrusts, and tries real hard not to think about how good it feels because that’s a one-way ticket to coming like a freight train.

Itachi opens up for him by inches, like the first time all over again, only now they both kinda know what they’re doing. His breathing is getting ragged, Shisui notices, and even if he can’t see Itachi’s face where it’s pressed into the blanket he can still get some satisfaction from that.

But Shisui still ain’t vying for sainthood, so there’s a point where he forgets himself and thrusts in _deep_ —

Shisui moans, only realizing a second later that Itachi did too.

“Fuck,” he croaks, “did I—”

“No.” Itachi’s voice is wrecked. “No, it was good.”

“Yeah?” Shisui wets his lips. “You want me to do it again?”

Itachi nods, a slow bob of his head against scratchy fabric, but somehow that doesn’t feel good enough. Shisui bends over as far as he’s able, until he can say it right behind Itachi’s ear:

“Couldn’t hear you, Professor.”

Itachi shudders.

“Yes,” he says.

Shisui straightens back up and starts to fuck him again, harder this time, Itachi making these soft gasping noises under him as the strokes get faster and his fingers tighten in the blanket. Shisui fixes his eyes briefly on the ceiling to try and keep it together.

“Y’know,” he grits out, trying to distract himself, “you don’t gotta be so quiet. There’s nobody else out here, ‘cept the horses.”

He thrusts a little deeper that time to make his point, getting a strangled groan for his efforts. And then he does it again, and again, until Itachi’s making noises that Shisui’s never heard out of him. He’s starting to feel kinda lightheaded from it, but his mouth keeps babbling on of its own accord.

“An’ I figure, I’ve had to watch those— _fuck_ —those goddamn horses try to fuck each other way too many times, they can watch me for a change—”

“Shisui, _please_ ,” Itachi gasps, and Shisui almost comes right fucking there before he realizes Itachi isn’t finished, “stop talking about the horses.”

“Whatever you say,” Shisui mutters, except now he’s got nothing to keep his mind off the fact that Itachi keeps tightening around him, and that shit’s real dangerous right about now.

It ain’t slow anymore, that’s for sure, and when Shisui finds an angle that makes Itachi moan good and proper whenever he hits it right, from there it’s just a speed run to the finish.

Shisui ends up coming first, burying whatever noise might’ve come out of his mouth in the sweat-slick skin of Itachi’s back and riding it out, fucking into him over and over as his brain whites out—and he still hears, distantly, the choked cry Itachi lets out when Shisui pushes him over the edge.

For a long while there’s nothing but the sound of heavy breathing.

Shisui for one’d be happy to stay buried inside for as long as Itachi’ll let him, but sooner or later he manages to put his brain back together enough to ease himself out and flop down, boneless, on the blanket.

Itachi rolls over to look at him. He doesn’t say anything, so Shisui does.

“C’mere.”

When Itachi inches closer Shisui reaches out and cups his face with one hand, pulls him close and kisses his mouth. Short and sweet, and still enough to make his stomach do weird shit.

Itachi is smiling when they break apart.

They drift into a comfortable, easy silence. Itachi’s body is warm, curled against his, and Shisui’s on the verge of falling asleep when suddenly he remembers the other thing that’s been nagging at him.

“Hey, Itachi.”

“Mm?”

“You know what happened to Aaron? Y’know, the deputy who—uh.” Shisui coughs. “Seems he went missin’ after I did.”

“He did not ‘go missing’,” Itachi says after a second. “He was offered a better position elsewhere. I was sorry to lose a deputy, but it was unavoidable.”

“Seems awful convenient, don’t it?” Shisui muses. “The one person who coulda gotten me hanged just happens to get a better offer out fuck-knows-where?”

“I don’t know what you are implying, Shisui.” Itachi lets out a yawn. “But I am—or was, rather—an officer of the law. I could never countenance something as base as bribing a fellow lawman.”

“’Course not,” Shisui says, but Itachi’s fallen asleep on him so he’ll never know if his former sheriff would’ve picked up on the sarcasm.

Thing is, in any other case Shisui would believe him. Honor, honesty, all that old King Arthur shit—Itachi lives and breathes by it. But somewhere deep down Shisui can’t shake the certainty the whole thing with Aaron was his work.

 _He kicked that honor for me_ , Shisui thinks, _even if it was just for a second_.

That’s a damn near awe-inspiring amount of power to have over somebody as loyal as Itachi, and Shisui swears right then and there that he’s gonna try to be worthy of it.

“You woulda made a scary fuckin’ lawyer, know that?” he murmurs, his eyes starting to close.

The corner of Itachi’s mouth turns upward in his sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhh...Happy belated Valentine's Day?? ^^;

.

Time feels like it’s going by faster, or maybe that’s just ‘cause Shisui doesn’t have that massive weight of _unfinished business_ dragging behind him with every step he takes. It’s easier for him and Itachi to talk now that they’re not stepping around the big hairy elephant in the room, though they’re still not talking about everything; Itachi’s still in near-isolation with the horses and Shisui still feels guilt gnawing at him over it, but it’s warring with the relief he feels at not having to worry about finding Itachi dead in the middle of town one day. And then he feels guilty about that too.

The sex is helping to take his mind off it, though. Seems to be doing the same for Itachi, if the noises he’s gotten more comfortable with making are any sign.

All things being said, it’s a few weeks after their little heart-to-heart that Shisui walks into the Scarecrow’s general store for his candy fix and about has a stroke.

The Scarecrow himself can have that effect on people who ain’t used to him, Shisui knows, half his face covered with a mask and his hair gone gray too early to match up with the rest of him. (He’s also got about eight eyes in the back of his head, or so Shisui’s youthful arrest record pertaining to this store would suggest.) He doesn’t have that effect on Shisui anymore, though—he’s gotten Shisui thrown in a cell enough times by now that Shisui basically considers them friends. He tips his hat to the shopkeeper as he walks in.

“Afternoon, Scarecrow.”

“Afternoon,” the Scarecrow replies without looking up from his book. Shisui sneaks a glance at the cover—it looks like a new one, which means a new shipment of city stuff must’ve just come in, which means Shisui might get his fix today after all. His mouth is already watering.

“You got any chocolate left? An’ maybe some molasses?” Itachi loves the stuff even if he’ll never admit to it, and Shisui’s thinking maybe it’ll make him feel better about being cooped up for so long.

The Scarecrow peers at him with his one visible eye. “Time was, you would’ve just nicked it while my back was turned,” he says smoothly.

Shisui raises his hands. “I’m a bona fide lawman now. Gotta set a good example and all that, which means no stealing from pillars of society like yourself.”

The Scarecrow snorts, but his nose is already stuck back in the book. “I should have some left. My assistant can get it for you.” He waves a hand at someone out of Shisui’s line of sight, and there’s a rustling from the back room.

“Assistant?” Shisui repeats. The Scarecrow’s famous for not suffering fools lightly, which he likes to joke rules out most people in this town. He’s never had an apprentice that Shisui can remember. “Who’s your—”

A bar of chocolate and a bit of molasses are set down on the counter in front of him, and Shisui looks right up into Itachi’s eyes.

“That will be twenty-five cents,” Itachi says, and anyone watching would think they didn’t know each other from Adam, but Shisui catches the glint in Itachi’s eye that says he’s pleased as punch at getting to catch Shisui off his guard. Shisui coughs and pulls himself together.

“What, no lawman discount?” he asks, leaning on the counter.

“I hear you’ve been rather overfond of the five-finger discount in the past,” Itachi says dryly. “Let us call this breaking even.”

“No mercy for the wicked, huh?”

“Only if they sincerely repent,” Itachi replies, his smooth tone going just a little pointed. “Isn’t that what the Bible says?”

Shisui shrugs, a grin spreading across his face. “Wouldn’t know. Never been real welcome at church services myself.”

“Is that so,” Itachi murmurs. Heat is starting to pool in the space between them. It feels like the first day they crossed paths all over again. Shisui leans in just a little more—

“Yes, and there are many good reasons for that.” The Scarecrow sounds bored more than anything, but Shisui jerks back all the same. “Now stop haranguing my assistant, Shisui. If you aren’t going to buy anything else then shoo.”

“Awful cold way to treat someone with a badge,” Shisui mutters, but he fumbles the money out of his pocket and lays it on the counter.

“Don’t let it melt,” Itachi advises him as he hands over the candy. Which the prick does on purpose, Shisui is sure, because then all he can think about is what he could do with it if it _did_ melt, the things he could lick it off of…

He’s gotta get out of this store.

Clearing his throat, Shisui tips his hat again and turns around to leave, and he’s almost out the door when he sees them coming through the front window.

Dosu and Zaku.

Shisui veers sideways and ducks behind one of the tall shelves, his heart pounding in his chest. He’s pretty sure they didn’t see him, but all the same, there’s something unnerving about running into people who tried to knife you the last time you met.

“Scarecrow,” Dosu greets as they walk in. Just hearing his gravelly voice makes the hairs on the back of Shisui’s neck stand up.

“What can I do for you?” the Scarecrow asks, still sounding bored as ever. When Shisui chances a look, though, he sees the shopkeeper’s set down his book. That’s not a good sign.

It’s Zaku who answers. “Whiskey,” he says, “an’ lots of it.”

“Celebrating something?”

Shisui stops himself from snorting at the last second. As if that much liquor ain’t breakfast, lunch and dinner to those cousins on a normal day.

“Nothin’ in particular,” Zaku is saying, but whatever he says next goes fuzzy in Shisui’s head because he’s just realized who’s about to be handing them their whiskey.

_Fuck._

Sure enough, Itachi’s cool voice comes a second later: “Your liquor.”

Someone whistles—Zaku again, that jackass. “Look who’s fuckin’ showing his face. Ain’t too good for us now, are you?”

“What my cousin means to say,” Dosu cuts in, “is that we had assumed we wouldn’t be seeing you anymore, Sheriff.”

“I’m not the sheriff anymore,” Itachi corrects him. “And Sheriff Inuzuka has done an exemplary job in my absence.”

“Aw, y’mean you don’t miss any of it?” Zaku again, his voice a sneer. “Not the discounts, or the free booze, or the _liberties_ your kind takes with prisoners?”

Shisui clenches his fists hard and talks himself into sense. Stepping in now would only make shit worse; it’d make Itachi look weak, and these ain’t the kind of people you want to look weak in front of.

But damn if he doesn’t want to relieve Zaku of every one of his remaining teeth.

He waits, holding his breath, for Itachi to do something stupid. But Itachi’s not him, so instead all he hears is the sound of glass sliding across wood.

“Best not to let it warm up here,” Itachi says, perfectly mild.

There’s a second of silence. Shisui peeks around again—just in time to see Zaku spit in Itachi’s face.

“You ain’t no lawman,” he snaps. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

He storms out then; Dosu puts some money down before following him past Shisui’s hiding place and out onto the street. It’s not until they’re out of sight that Itachi reaches up slowly, mechanically, to wipe the gob of spit off his face.

The Scarecrow says something to Itachi under his breath, but Shisui doesn’t hear it. He’s too busy breathing slow to keep from running out after them, starting a fight neither of them needs. When’d he get so damn _reasonable_ anyway? It’s probably one more thing he can blame Itachi for.

When he calms down enough to loosen up his fists, his nails are red from where they broke right through his skin.

.

Itachi’s already back at the stable by the time Shisui returns to it, having finally managed to give his reports to Hana (and in some real feat of self-restraint managing not to sic her on those shitkicking cousins). He’s giving one of their newer arrivals, a strawberry roan, a good brushing.

“Does Flicker need cleaning?” he asks.

Shisui leads the big dark horse into his stall. “Nah, he didn’t end up doin’ much dirty work today. I’ll check his hooves later.” He tries to sound casual. “Speakin’ of today, what was that about at the store? Didn’t know you’d picked up work for the Scarecrow.”

“I spoke with Hana yesterday,” Itachi says. “She agreed with me that it was time to show my face in society again. Such as it is.”

“She did, huh.” Would’ve been nice of Hana to give him that little update herself, but if Shisui brings that up he’ll be begging for another lecture on how _I don’t work for you, Shisui, you work for me_. “So why there? You fond of the musty smell, or just tryin’ to get your hands on the Scarecrow’s private library?”

“Very funny,” comes the dry response. “Hana also happened to mention that it would be a good place for someone looking to avoid…complications. Hatake was kind enough to offer me a place.”

Well, it’s true enough that nobody in their right mind would try to tangle with the Scarecrow, but—“Wait, who’s Hatake?”

Itachi gives him a look. “I strongly doubt anyone’s mother would be careless enough to name him ‘Scarecrow’.”

That’s fair enough _._ Shisui shrugs past it and gets to the point.

“You wanna stay away from those cousins,” he says. “Dosu and Zaku. They’re bad news—worse’n usual, I mean.”

“I gathered that much during my time as sheriff,” Itachi says without looking up from his work. He doesn’t sound surprised that Shisui knows about the scene at the store. “Though I suspect they aren’t foolish enough to start a fight under Hatake’s nose. There are limits to bravery.”

“The Scarecrow ain’t always gonna be around,” Shisui points out. “Those two got it out for you—” _And for me_ , he doesn’t say “—an’ they’re not the type to let common sense stop ‘em.”

“So what is it you suggest? I should quit my position and bury myself in the desert somewhere?”

Frustration leaks into his voice. “I’m just sayin’ it might’ve been a little soon to put yourself out there, that’s all.”

Itachi’s hands go still on the roan’s coat. He turns to look Shisui in the eye.

“Surely I’ve misunderstood,” he says, all lightness gone. “You couldn’t possibly be saying that I should, in fact, bury myself and never come back out.”

“Not never!” Shisui protests. “Just until it’s…safe.”

He realizes what a hilariously shitty choice of word that is before it even leaves his mouth, and the flat look on Itachi’s face says he doesn’t miss the irony either.

“Safe,” he repeats. “Always that. If I hid my face until you deemed it ‘safe’ I would never leave this stable, and in that case I might as well have remained under my father’s roof.”

Shisui flinches—it’s one thing thinking shit like that to yourself, it’s another to have it thrown in your face by someone else. “That ain’t fair. I ain’t keeping you prisoner here, am I?”

“But would you, if you could?”

“What the _fuck_ , Itachi?”

Itachi stands up so fast he upends the stool he was sitting on. The roan he’s been brushing shies away like he’s avoiding the brand.

“I don’t know what ideas you have been forming in your head,” Itachi says, the fire in his eyes at odds with his even tone, “but I am not one of those girls in Hatake’s books, and I am not as sheltered as I was when I first came here. I do not need any more of your _protection_ , Shisui.”

The venom in the word feels like a punch to the gut, but Shisui’s used to taking punches and he knows it’s no good to focus on the hurt in the moment—so much better to focus on the anger.

“You sure about that?” he retorts. “’Cause last time I checked this town woulda hung you out to dry if it weren’t for me.”

“And instead I am meant to live out my days in a stable. A great improvement.” It’s the most bitter he’s ever heard him.

“Don’t talk down to me, Professor,” Shisui snaps. “What the fuck did you want me to do back then? Bail myself out and let you take the fall for me?”

Itachi’s eyes flash, and a second too late Shisui recognizes the look of a wick attached to a powder keg.

A wick that’s finally burnt down to nothing.

“I wanted you to _respect my decision_.” The words leave Itachi in a furious rush. “Helping you, betraying my duties here, all of it—it was _my_ choice, one for which I was fully prepared to accept the consequences. Instead I woke up to find that the choice had been taken from me, the people whose respect I fought to earn now considered me incapable either of fulfilling my duties or taking responsibility for my actions, and my father—”

A ragged breath escapes. It almost sounds like a horrible, horrible laugh. “My father would rather have received me home in a coffin. So please, Shisui, tell me again how I should be grateful.”

Shisui finds he can’t tell him a goddamn thing.

The silence stretches until he swears his ears are ringing from it. Itachi takes a deep breath before he speaks again.

“I will honor my commitment to Hatake,” he says. “I refuse to stay buried here.”

And Shisui doesn’t say it—he’s too pissed and too tangled up to think opening his mouth is a good idea right now—but the thought comes into his head all the same:

_I don’t wanna be the one burying you later._

.

That night, for some reason, Shisui finds himself thinking about his ma.

Memories tug at his brain while he tries to sleep, tries to ignore the sound of Itachi’s breathing filling up the too-small space. He remembers hating it every time his ma left home, because he was a kid and the idea of death was still something terrifying instead of something you just got used to. He remembers always wanting to ask her to stay with him.

But he never did. He knew she would’ve laughed and left anyway, because it was what she had to do, and staying inside all day wouldn’t’ve suited her even if she had the choice. So she’d kept leaving and she’d kept coming home.

She died at home.

 _Shit_. He hasn’t had something to lose in so long he’d almost forgotten that feeling—the helplessness that comes when someone you care about doesn’t need your protection, or much want it.

_He deserves better, you know._

Sasuke had said it like it was some kinda challenge: _Well? Will you try to prove me wrong?_

Shisui didn’t have a good answer then. He’s less and less sure he has one now.


	6. Chapter 6

.

Shisui’s fully anticipating the next morning being awkward as all hell, but as luck would have it Hana needs him on an early patrol, so he’s dressed and out of the stable before Itachi even twitches. Which is saying something, because Itachi likes to wake up at times offensive to both God and man.

Awkwardness aside, the day is still a long one. It’s been looking like the beginnings of a rainstorm for days, which the whole town needs pretty bad, but nothing’s happened yet and it’s putting everyone on edge. Shisui puts a stop to no less than six street brawls during his patrol, and only half of those people were drunk.

(He knows for sure because he stops by Anko’s saloon halfway through the day, and only self-restraint worthy of the saints themselves stops him from downing a whole bottle of whiskey all by his damn self.

“The fuck have you been giving these people lately?” he grumbles, nursing his glass to make it last as long as possible.

“Nothing but the usual,” Anko says with a shrug, leaning on the bartop like she’s tired too. “I’ll grant they’ve been staying longer these last few days, but that’s what happens when we don’t see the sun for too long. Everybody’s getting restless. Either something needs to happen or it needs to stop pretending like it’s gonna.”

“Amen to that,” Shisui sighs, raising his glass and finishing it off. He thinks of something else then. “You seen Dosu or Zaku today?”

“No, and thank Christ,” Anko says with feeling. She even crosses herself for effect. “If I never see those fucking faces again it’ll be too soon.”)

The paperwork for that takes forever, by the way. Shisui’s starting to understand why Itachi never seemed to do anything else; he and Hana have been stuck in her office for ages working on it, Hana with her pile and Shisui with his, as they both squint in the flickering lamplight and try to ignore the drunken grumblings of the only people Shisui actually jailed today.

It’s pitch black outside by the time Hana finally tells him to leave. Shisui takes a deep breath of the night air, expecting to feel relived after the stuffiness of the office, but all he gets is a lungful of solid humidity. _Fuck._ Anko’s right; if the rain ain’t coming then those clouds need to go, because they’re not doing wonders for anybody’s mood.

He didn’t bother riding Flicker out today—figured there was no point being so high off the ground when lately he keeps having to get down and knock people’s heads together. So it’s a pretty long walk back to the stables. Long enough for Shisui to think until his head aches with it.

He keeps coming back to the same question: what if he _is_ burying Itachi? Ain’t Itachi exactly right when he says Shisui wants to pull the same shit Fugaku did?

 _I’m just trying to keep him alive_ , he argues with himself.

But there’s also more to life than having it; Shisui knows that much, otherwise he wouldn’t’ve come home in the first place. He could’ve stayed at that bar with Mizuki yelling at him and drunks picking fights all night long. That would’ve been the _safe_ thing to do.

Taking things into his own hands had been the best option he could see. Shisui still isn’t sure things would’ve ended any differently if he’d asked Itachi nicely before knocking him over the head, but he’s starting to think maybe it’s the asking that’s the problem.

Because he _didn’t_ ask, and this is where it’s gotten them: things could be worse, yeah, but they could also be a helluva lot better.

He’s coming up to the stable before he realizes it, seeing the glow of lights before the place itself. Which should strike him as odd right off, because the lighting situation in the stable has never been all that great, and Shisui’s lucky if he can keep one lamp lit when the wind starts coming through. But he’s still buried in his own thoughts so it’s not until he actually gets closer that he realizes it ain’t lamplight he’s seeing.

It’s fire.

He stops dead in his tracks for a second, taking in the red-orange flames licking their way out of the windows, eating slowly up the walls toward the roof, and his first thought is, _Maybe he’s still at the store_.

But then there’s the rumbling of hooves and the screaming of distressed horses as all of them come galloping out of the gates, eyes rolling in their heads, Flicker bringing up the rear and whinnying like he’s trying to warn Shisui about something.

Shisui knows. Somebody had to free those horses, which means—

“ _Itachi!_ ”

He’s already running into the inferno instead of waiting for a response because he knows there won’t be one, just like he knows Itachi is incapable of letting something go wrong if he thinks there’s even the smallest chance he could put it right.

Going into the stable is like walking into a wall of smoke. Shisui’s eyes start watering immediately; he yanks the bandanna from around his neck and ties it around his mouth and nose to keep from coughing his lungs out, squinting through streaming eyes to look for Itachi.

It doesn’t take long: the former sheriff is throwing the last bucket of drinking water over the worst of the blaze. It hisses a little but keeps on burning. Shisui calls for him again over the noise of crackling wood and hay, and this time Itachi turns. His face is smudged with soot.

“That’s not gonna be enough!” Shisui yells over the noise.

“We need more water,” Itachi shouts back, and Shisui almost wants to laugh because of course they do, somebody always needs water in a desert. He grabs Itachi’s shoulders to keep his attention.

“Go back to town,” he says, still fighting to be heard. “Find Anko or Hana, they’ll help us out!”

He can see in Itachi’s eyes that he wants to argue, wants to be the one to stay behind while Shisui goes for help, but Itachi is also smart enough to know that they don’t have time for that right now. He nods once before turning tail and bolting out of the stable.

Satisfied that at least the cavalry should be on their way soon enough (Itachi is a fast little fucker when he tries), Shisui turns to the chaos around him and is trying to work out what needs to be saved first when he hears a loud _crack_.

Too loud to be the sound of flames eating through wood.

Shisui’s gut twists as he turns on his heel, races out the door Itachi left by, and gets outside just in time to see Zaku lowering his smoking pistol.

Itachi’s on the ground in front of him, facedown and unmoving.

Shisui’s brain goes blank. He can’t think, can’t move, can’t even really hear the fire crackling on behind him. Can’t see anything besides Itachi lying still at Zaku’s feet.

Zaku whistles, the sound snapping Shisui back to himself.

“Shit! He went down easier’n I thought!” He looks up and meets Shisui’s eye as a grin spreads across his face. “See, we didn’t bring a knife to a gunfight this time.”

“Don’t play with your food, Zaku,” Dosu says from a ways behind his cousin. “Finish him too.”

Zaku glances over his shoulder with a flicker of irritation. “Don’t much like being told what to do, Dosu, you know that. You got a gun too, why don’t you finish ‘im?”

Dosu’s visible eye narrows. “Who was it who started the fire? I’ve done my share of the work for tonight.”

“Work?” Zaku lets out a high, crazed laugh as he raises his pistol again, pointing it square between Shisui’s eyes. “Who said nothin’ about work? This is _fun_!”

He’s probably gonna die here, Shisui figures. His own gun is still in its holster; even if he draws it faster than Zaku can pull the trigger there’s still Dosu to worry about. So, yeah, this is probably lights out for him.

Somehow that doesn’t scare him as bad as it did, though. He’s got nothing to lose now—again.

“What’d I ever do to you?” he asks, and it comes out sounding almost conversational. “How’d I piss you off so bad you try to kill me and burn down my stable?”

Zaku shrugs. “Wasn’t so much you,” he says. “We were more pissed about the little sheriff here.” He kicks Itachi’s body in the ribs. Shisui grits his teeth but doesn’t move. “You know this little shit went to _Sheriff_ Inuzuka and ratted us out yesterday? She came an’ gave us a talking-to like a good schoolteacher.”

Itachi wouldn’t’ve been stupid enough to draw attention to himself like that, Shisui knows. His throat tightens. _Unless he was worried about them going off drunk and hurting somebody else._

“So he turns up and tries to do his job and you hate him for it?” Shisui says. “The fuck kinda sense does that make?”

Zaku scowls. “He ain’t even the sheriff anymore. Pull the wool off your eyes, he’s one of _them_ and you know it. Those rich city folk don’t give two shits about us; they just come here to lord over us and throw us in cells because they can. Fugaku was the same fucking way.”

Shisui’s fists clench. “Itachi ain’t his dad.”

“The hell he ain’t!” Zaku screams, his patience snapping in half. “They’re all the goddamned same, wanna drive us out so that their rich friends can come scoop up the land _we_ settled on. Well, we built this boomtown an’ we’re not having it anymore. When the _fuck_ did you take their side over ours?”

Shisui’s eyes flicker to Itachi on instinct. Zaku’s mouth twists into an ugly sneer.

“Y’know, I always wondered what kinda stick this kid had shoved up his ass,” he says. “Guess now I know.”

“Get off your fucking high horse,” Shisui snaps. “You don’t give a damn about this town or the people in it, you just wanna be on top of the shit heap. Fugaku might’ve been an ass but at least he kept people safe from you and your fucking mummy of a cousin, and now you wanna spit on Itachi for doing the same thing!”

“That’s enough,” Dosu’s cool voice cuts in. “Zaku, shoot him. We’re done here.”

“Fine with me,” Zaku snarls. He cocks his gun just as Shisui reaches for his, knowing he’s not gonna be fast enough but fuck if he’s not gonna try anyway—

Then three things happen real fast: the gun goes off, Shisui gets his hand on his pistol, and Itachi jumps up off the ground.

Shisui has no idea what order these things happen in; all he knows is he doesn’t get shot.

Itachi’s knocked Zaku’s hands upward but the idiot reacts fast, gets in a punch to Itachi’s face that knocks him back to the ground. Shisui manages to shake off his shock and trains his gun on Zaku, opening his mouth to shout a warning, but even as he does it he sees the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye, realizes too late he’s forgotten what he always told himself to remember: someone’s silence doesn’t mean they’re not a threat.

Dosu is aiming his own pistol straight for Shisui, and there’s nothing he can do but close his eyes.

_I was always gonna end up dead here one way or another._

A fourth shot goes off.

Somewhere in the sickening silence that follows, Shisui realizes—for the second time in as many minutes—that he hasn’t been shot. He opens his eyes.

Zaku is on the ground, somehow, his gun no longer in his hands. His eyes are fixed on his cousin, but Dosu’s one eye is fixed on the hole in his own chest.

As Shisui watches, stunned silent, the eye travels back up until it reaches Itachi. Itachi and his shaking hands and his smoking gun.

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” Dosu murmurs, but the rest of the sentence fades as he tips sideways and hits the ground.

“Dosu!” Zaku screams, halfway to his feet, but Shisui takes advantage of his distraction to step forward and hit him hard with the butt of his gun. Zaku drops back to the sand, unconscious.

Shisui’s really not proud of how good he’s getting at that.

Wordlessly he turns to Itachi. The former sheriff’s eyes are fixed on Dosu’s body; Shisui doubts he even noticed Zaku moved.

“Hey,” Shisui murmurs, trying to snap him out of it. “You can put the gun down. It’s over.”

Belatedly he realizes Itachi’s shoulder is a mass of blood, but Itachi doesn’t seem to have noticed yet either. His eyes are still fixed in place. His hands are still shaking. Suddenly he opens his mouth.

“I haven’t,” he starts, then falters. “I didn’t—”

“I know,” Shisui says quietly.

Itachi nods, blinking hard, and slowly lowers the gun. Shisui smothers the instinct to pull him close because as much as he hates it, there’s no time for it just now.

“Your shoulder?” he asks instead.

Itachi takes a breath and eyes his wound critically.

“That should have been my chest. Zaku’s aim was poor,” he says. “But it was dark, and there were two of them, so I thought it would be prudent to pretend otherwise.” A shaky exhale. “I have had practical experience being unconscious. It was simple enough to fake.”

“Guess you have some self-preservation instincts after all,” Shisui says. “Faking everyone out like that ain’t very honorable of you.”

He meant it as a joke, but it comes out more unsteady than he’d like. Itachi almost looks apologetic.

“This isn’t a very honorable town,” he points out. “But I would like it to remain standing nonetheless. Which means learning to adapt.”

Shisui sighs. “Now you really sound like one of us.”

Itachi opens his mouth to say something else, but just then Zaku groans on the ground. Itachi looks down at him with a weird mix of disgust and guilt.

“Y’know,” Shisui says carefully, “you ain’t the lawman here anymore. I can take care of this.”

But Itachi shakes his head and reaches for the cuffs hooked onto Shisui’s belt. Shisui hands them over and Itachi goes to kneel beside Zaku, whose eyes are starting to open. Itachi murmurs something to him that Shisui can’t hear.

As Zaku’s eyes start to fill up with tears Shisui looks away, his own eyes dragged to where Dosu’s corpse is cooling a few feet away. A shiver crawls down his spine even though it’s a warm night.

He spends the next few minutes trying real hard not to think about anything at all.

“We should go,” Itachi says at last. Shisui turns and sees Zaku shaky but standing, his hands cuffed behind his back. Somewhere in the thirty seconds Shisui was looking away, Itachi also managed to tie a tourniquet for his bleeding arm. Which is pretty typical when he thinks about it.

He hasn’t moved two feet when a drop of water hits him right in the eye. Shisui blinks.

“What the—” He tips his head up towards the black sky and is rewarded with another wet drop to the face. And another. Before long it’s raining so hard he can barely see five feet in front of him.

“Shisui,” Itachi says just behind him, and Shisui turns to see what he’s pointing at.

The flames that had been swallowing up his stable are hissing as they fight against the water. It’s a losing fight. The fire shrinks and shrinks until finally, as Shisui watches, the last of it disappears into strands of gray smoke.

.


	7. Chapter 7

The look on Hana’s face when they show up at her office door—Itachi bloody, Zaku in cuffs and all of them soaked through—is one that Shisui will probably treasure at some later point.

She snaps out of it pretty fast, puts Zaku behind bars while Itachi avails himself of her stash of bandages. Luck was on his side tonight, Shisui muses; it looks like Zaku’s bullet went right through his shoulder.

When Hana comes back, Shisui takes the hit and tells her the whole story. She looks exhausted by the end of it.

“Honestly,” she tells him. “It’s a miracle you’ve lived this long, and no mistake.”

Shisui winces. Itachi says nothing at all. Hana’s eyes flicker between them both and soften a little.

“Well, I am glad you’re both not dead,” she admits. Then, lowering her voice, “You want help with the body? I can leave Haimaru to guard this idiot.” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder at Zaku, who hasn’t moved or said a word since she locked him in his little cell.

Shisui drags his eyes away and shakes his head. “We’ll deal with it,” he says. “He, uh—Zaku probably shouldn’t be by himself right now.”

Hana looks surprised, but she nods.

“Fine,” she says. “Then I’ll keep an eye on things here. And I’ll have a plan for repairing the stable by morning, so make sure you’re here bright and early.”

Shisui pulls a face. “You’re allowed to sleep, y’know.”

Hana gives him an unimpressed look. “You try running this town one day. Sleep ain’t looking too likely unless I take an untimely dust nap.”

Itachi nods to himself as they leave her office, the downpour having thankfully stopped.

“I chose my replacement well,” he says.

“You ruined her, y’mean,” Shisui corrects him. “Hana used to be a normal person.”

Itachi shrugs but he doesn’t take the bait. It don’t take a genius to guess what he’s thinking about, especially since Shisui’s pretty sure he’s thinking the same thing.

“Think he’ll end up swingin’?” he asks as they start walking back to the stables.

“He could,” Itachi says dully. “For destruction of property if not for attempting to murder current and former lawmen.”

Shisui hums, thoughtful. “Seems to me like we’re the only witnesses to that, though. The only, what’s it—injured parties here?”

Itachi glances at him sideways. “Would you see him freed?”

Shisui shrugs. “Ain’t saying that. Just not real keen on seeing him hang.” He hesitates. “An’ I guess maybe I feel kinda sorry for him. Bein’ alone in the world is a real shitty feeling.”

“I saw the look in his eyes,” Itachi murmurs. “I doubt he’ll want to return to his former life. And I—I don’t disagree with you.” He bites his lip. “But I don’t think I am sorry.”

Part of Shisui wants to laugh out loud at that, because he knows damn well it took the whole walk to town for Itachi’s hands to stop shaking. But he’s also kinda morbidly curious, so he bites.

“Why’s that? Because he tried to kill you?”

“Because being sorry implies that you regret having done something,” Itachi says. “I can regret the circumstances, and I will likely never stop regretting them. Taking someone’s life is never something to be proud of.”

He takes a breath. “But I will not apologize for Dosu being dead if it means that you are not.”

Shisui stops walking. Itachi stops with him, a question in his eyes.

“I’m sorry for bein’ a dipshit over the whole Scarecrow thing,” Shisui blurts. It’s kinda out of nowhere, but after a second of blinking Itachi takes it in stride.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. And then, “I am sorry for failing to understand why you did it. All of it.”

Even quieter, “I believe I understand now.”

Shisui’s heart stutters a little there, but he doesn’t push it. They’re both exhausted, and even if Itachi claims to have his guilt wrapped up nice and pretty Shisui doesn’t believe that for a second.

He’s got enough on his mind without Shisui piling on.

So they walk the rest of the way in silence. Still, it’s a calmer silence than Shisui would’ve expected.

.

They bury Dosu first thing when they get back. Itachi would’ve done the whole thing himself, Shisui’s sure, but Shisui grabs two shovels from the charcoaled shell of his stable and doesn’t give him room to argue.

It’s ugly work, digging a desert grave, but it goes faster with two. The sand is soft from all the rain but it’s still hard enough labor to keep Shisui’s thoughts mostly off the _why_ of the thing and focused on the _how_. He imagines they’re both grateful for the distraction.

In the end, though, there’s no escaping the purpose of the job.

Dosu’s body makes a sickening _thud_ of a noise when Shisui drops him in the hole. The sound sets every single hair on his body to standing; Itachi looks like he’s gonna throw up right there.

But he doesn’t, and they fill the grave a whole lot faster than they’d dug it up.

(Shisui scrubs his hands in the dregs of the horses’ trough for what feels like hours and they still don’t feel rightly clean.)

Then it’s time to take inventory, figure out how much of Shisui’s supplies survived and how much needs to be replaced. The stable itself is still mostly in one piece, though he doesn’t much like sleeping on the floor instead of in the loft (Itachi’s orders, at least until they’ve had time to figure whether the wood up there is still sound enough to bear their weight). The inside might be blackened and charred in places, but some of the hay survived and so did a good chunk of his equipment, so he supposes that’s something. And at least the horses were well behaved enough to stick pretty close by, because the last thing on God’s earth Shisui wanted to do tonight was chase down a bunch of spooked horses.

All said, it’s been one of the longest nights of Shisui’s life. He’s guessing Itachi feels the same, given that he all but collapses the second they’ve pillowed their jackets under their heads. Shisui really wishes he could do the same, but his thoughts won’t quit nagging him.

Dosu and Zaku’ve been a thorn in this town’s side for as long as Shisui can remember; they were probably the only people Fugaku wanted to see hanged more than Shisui himself. The fact that Itachi killed one of them and helped arrest the other might just be enough to get him back in Fugaku’s good graces. It’d make a hell of a campaign slogan come reelection time, Shisui thinks bitterly: Fugaku could call himself the father of a hero who’s bringing order to the chaos of the West.

And if Itachi played along in exchange for a roof that didn’t leak and a place to stay with his family, maybe even a shot at law school if Fugaku was feeling real generous, how could Shisui blame him for that? Especially when the alternative, far as Itachi can see, is working a general store in the middle of the desert for the rest of his life?

Nobody sticks around here if they’ve got any other choice.

(Nobody except Shisui, apparently, but he knows he’s a dumbass and he’s not gonna poke that particular bear right now.)

_So what are you gonna do about it?_

Thing is, Shisui’s tired. It’s more than just tonight. It’s been every day since he left this town, and then every day since Itachi came back to it. Big declarations or no, Shisui’s still not sure where they stand, and nigh-on three years of uncertainty has finally worn him down.

So maybe it’s time for him to lay all his cards on the table. To try fixing what he didn’t realize he broke.

Shisui’s so wrapped up in the first nuggets of his idea that he barely notices the lack of any soft snores coming from his other side. The silence that means he’s not the only one who can’t sleep.

.

“You want me to _what_?”

Hana’s looking at him like Shisui’s being an idiot, but he’s man enough to admit that she’s probably got the right of it this time around.

“Why not?” he says, trying for reasonable. “You’re the one who keeps sayin’ you need deputies who don’t look at you sideways for bein’ a woman and all that. If anyone’s gonna fit that profile it’ll be the guy who brought you on in the first place, right?”

A lesser woman probably would’ve put her head down on the desk and bashed herself into sweet oblivion by now, but Hana’s made of stronger stuff. She rallies.

“It’s a stupid idea,” she says. And I’m pretty sure we _just had_ a talk about you and stupid ideas.”

“People’ve been having those talks with me my whole life. Hasn’t slowed me down yet.” Hana’s opening her mouth to say something else, probably something smart and well thought-out that’ll blow all Shisui’s big ideas to pieces, so he barrels right over her. “Look. It’s been well over a year since the shitshow happened. If the town’s willin’ to accept _me_ as a goddamn lawman, why not Itachi?”

“You’re desert born and raised,” Hana points out. “You’re one of us; that counts for a lot and we both know it. It’s why I was able to stick my neck out for you in the first place.”

Shisui runs a hand back through his hair. “Yeah, I was born here. But Itachi worked his ass off for this town, to keep people safe in their own streets. That oughta be enough for a second chance.”

“Shisui—”

“And then,” Shisui interrupts, pulling out his trump card, “there’s the fact of him knockin’ Dosu and Zaku on their asses. That can’t hurt.”

“It can’t,” Hana admits slowly. “But it wouldn’t be the same as it was back then, either. He’d still have to earn their respect back, and that’s no easy thing out here.”

“Won’t bother him a bit. He’s patient like that.” Shisui hopes so, anyway.

Hana looks at him for a good long while. She looks tired, dark patches underneath her eyes, and Shisui feels a prick of guilt. He’s dumped a lot on her doorstop these past few days.

“I’m just tryin’ to give him a choice,” he says, quiet like. “’Cause we both know playing fetch for the Scarecrow ain’t gonna keep him here for long.”

She rubs the back of her neck like just talking to Shisui is giving her a headache. Haimaru lifts his massive furry head from the floor to lick her hand.

“And if he leaves,” she says, “I’m guessing you’re gonna be right behind him.”

Shisui shrugs. No point lying about it now. “If he wants me along, yeah.”

Because he already did his soul-searching for the decade, thanks all the same. He could learn to be happy someplace else, but a year in that shitty little bar never taught him how to manage that feat without Itachi.

Hana lets out a long groan. “You’re a nightmare, you know that? Shit, this town was almost peaceful before you waltzed back into it.”

Shisui knows that tone, but he tries real hard not to grin and wreck his chances.

“Whatever you say, Sheriff.”

A whuffling noise comes from beside the desk—Haimaru again, probably wanting his breakfast. Hana leans back in her chair and sighs.

“This is a dumb fucking idea,” she mutters. Then, “Fine. Because I owe Itachi. But you’re gonna be the one making sure he doesn’t get shot his first week back on duty.”

“No worries,” Shisui promises. “I’ll watch his back.” _If he’ll let me._

Hana shakes her head. “If you’re finished trying to drive me to an early grave, kindly get out of my office so I can finish my soul-devouring paperwork in peace.”

He’s halfway out of his chair when the word _paperwork_ pricks Shisui’s ears.

“You figure out what you’re gonna do with Zaku?” he asks. Hana raises an eyebrow.

“Why? You got some ideas?”

“Maybe,” Shisui says, casual even though his heart’s pounding. “Tenzin, y’know, the supply train conductor? He mentioned something last we talked, about needin’ more security when he makes runs out here.”

Hana’s eyes light. “That so?”

“Sure is.”

She tilts her head thoughtfully. “Sure would be nice not to have to send my own deputy out for a full day every time the trains come in. Maybe a bully boy is just what Tenzin needs to make his way out here in the rough West.”

Shisui tips his hat. “My thoughts exactly.”

So maybe someone like Zaku wasn’t exactly what Tenzin had in mind, Shisui reflects as he leaves the office. But there’s a chance this setup could work out for everyone.

And maybe he’s being real fucking stupid for thinking that Zaku will cool his heels just because he gets a job offer. But Shisui figures he’s done what he can. He knows full well he’s only where he is because people kept giving him second chances.

Maybe idiot criminals like he and Zaku need to stick their necks out for each other once in a while.

.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, friends. Thanks so much for sticking around - hope you've enjoyed the ride as much as I have!

One long-ass afternoon later Shisui is headed back to the stable, only to find Itachi isn’t there yet. Shisui swears under his breath—he hates dragging shit out; he’d rather have everything laid out sooner than later.

He leads Flicker inside and starts brushing the dust out of the horse’s mane to distract himself from the way his stomach’s twisting.

The odds of Itachi choosing to stick around still aren’t great and he knows it. And Shisui’d meant what he said to Hana; he can always market his skills as a bouncer in whatever city or boomtown they end up in. There are rowdy drunks everywhere.

But what if Itachi doesn’t want him around?

That thought’s the burr that’s been working itself under his skin. Shisui might’ve bucked up and realized he was in love with Itachi, but just because they’ve saved each other’s lives doesn’t mean Itachi feels the same. He’s never outright said as much, Shisui reminds himself forcefully, never promised Shisui anything, doesn’t _owe_ Shisui anything.

And Shisui’s gonna have to respect that too.

“Shisui?”

He’s so lost in thought that he near jumps out of his skin at the sound of his own name.

“Jesus, Itachi,” he mutters. “Scare a man half to death, why don’t you?”

“I think Flicker’s mane has been well tended to,” Itachi says pointedly. Shisui glances at the darkening sky outside and wonders just how long he’s been brushing the same length of horsehair.

“Where’ve you been?” he asks instead of responding. “Scarecrow keepin’ you busy?”

“Actually, I was speaking to Sheriff Inuzuka.”

Shisui goes still. “Were you now?”

“Mm.” Itachi picks up a brush and starts on Flicker’s other side, the one Shisui’s been neglecting all this time. “She said she had an opportunity for me.”

“Oh?”

Itachi glances at him over the horse’s back. “Did you ask her to offer me the deputy position?”

Shisui glares.

“I didn’t _ask_ her to do shit,” he says. “Just made my case as to why it’s stupid to have a damn good lawman wastin’ away working a storefront, all for some scuffle that happened more than a year ago. Guess she saw the reason in it.”

Itachi doesn’t look convinced. Shisui guesses at the reason and adds, “And before you start off on that again, this ain’t me trying to protect you or whatever the hell.”

“Then what is it?” Itachi asks.

“Guess you could think of it as a—a do-over. For last time.” Itachi’s expression is still unreadable. Shisui sighs, sets down his brush and nudges Flicker out of the way to meet his eyes proper.

“Look,” he says. “You ain’t in a coffin, an’ I’ll fully admit that was all I was thinkin’ about back then. I didn’t think about what’d come after, an’ I don’t know that I’d do it different, but I still should’ve talked to you first and I’m sorry you got stuck here because of it.”

Itachi opens his mouth to say something, but Shisui cuts him off. “I get that you’ve had nothin’ but shit choices lately, an’ that’s the only reason you came back here in the first place. I get that maybe you’ve got more choices now. I’m just sayin’ it seems like you could have something here—y’know, if you wanted.”

His ears go hot long before he finishes his little sermon, but to Shisui’s surprise Itachi doesn’t seem to be laughing at him.

“I think you’ve misunderstood me,” Itachi says slowly. “No, please listen. The circumstances weren’t ideal when I first came here. I’ll admit that I was bitter at first, but…I learned to appreciate it. The town and the people in it.” His eyes are soft. “This place was what gave me the chance to learn what I am capable of. I haven’t forgotten that.”

“You didn’t want to come back, though.” Shisui knows he’s shooting himself right in the foot, but he can’t seem to stop the words from coming. “You said it yourself, you thought you were going home to stay before Fugaku threw all that back in your face. You didn’t have a choice.”

“But I did,” Itachi points out. “I’m educated; I have plenty of experience. You act as if I had no worldly options, but I could have gone elsewhere to market my skills. I chose not to.”

Shisui folds his arms like he can pretend his palms aren’t sweating by hiding them.

“And why’s that?”

Itachi gives him a look that should be exasperated, but somehow isn’t.

“Why do you think?” he asks.

Shisui remembers his own words all of a sudden, another talk they ended up having way too late: _It wasn’t Anko’s whiskey_. His heart starts to pounding again. “I don’t—”

“I love you,” Itachi interrupts. Shisui freezes with his mouth still open. “It wasn’t a lack of options that brought me back here, Shisui. I thought you would have known that.”

And honestly, now Itachi says it, it’s not a shock. Sure, Shisui feels like he’s been hit by lightning, but that’s more from the fact that he’s hearing it _out loud_.

He thinks maybe he’s known for a long time, deep down. Maybe ever since Itachi tried to let him out of that jail cell. Maybe even before that.

Itachi comes up to him while Shisui is still recovering, interrupts his thoughts by pressing his mouth too gently to Shisui’s. It feels like he’s trying to say something without using his words, so Shisui closes his eyes and just lets himself feel it. This weird sudden certainty.

Itachi sighs when they break apart, his hand still resting on Shisui’s neck.

“I was beginning to think you wanted me to leave,” he murmurs, nudging their foreheads together. “And then Hana’s offer made me think differently. Why do you always insist on making things difficult?”

Shisui pulls a face. “Hey now, I’m not gonna take all the heat for this. We’re both fuckin’ stupid.”

“We must be,” Itachi says dryly. “I came all the way back to this dustball of a town because I thought one day I might see you again.”

“Sounds familiar,” Shisui mutters, his ears going hot again. Itachi smiles.

“Well, there you have it.”

Shisui clears his throat. “Just so we’re clear, then—you stayin’ in this dustball?”

“I already accepted Hana’s offer,” Itachi says easily, like Shisui hasn’t been giving himself ulcers over that question all damn afternoon. “I feel that I can do more good here than I could elsewhere. If only because here I am out of my father’s reach.”

The mention of the other Uchiha sheriff makes Shisui twitch.

“And Fugaku?” he asks. “If he hears about all this?” _If he tries to use you again_ goes unsaid.

Itachi surprises him by shrugging.

“Correspondence gets lost out here all the time,” he says.

His tone is mild but his eyes are all flint, and again Shisui finds himself believing in what Itachi doesn’t say out loud.

_He won’t touch this._

.

.

_Six Months Later_

.

.

“—was just some fun, Deputy, don’t gotta take it so serious.”

“Didn’t look like fun from where I was standin’,” Shisui points out, struggling to fit his cuffs around Jiro’s massive wrists. Truth be told, the man could probably snap Shisui in half if he weren’t pickled in whiskey at the moment. And Shisui could be drinking in peace if Jiro had kept his big hands to himself. So nobody’s real happy on this fine afternoon.

Jiro snorts under him. “Those girls’re always willin’ and you know it.”

Shisui bites back a sigh. “The girls are willin’ when you _pay_ , Jiro. An’ that one wasn’t much interested anyway. You oughta be grateful I’m not leavin’ you to Anko; you’ll be safer in a cell.”

Jiro’s expression twists in sudden, drunken rage. “Fuck you,” he spits. “You think just ‘cause you’re fuckin’ the sheriff that gives you the right to lord over me?”

Shisui has a second of familiar fear before he realizes two things: Itachi ain’t been sheriff for a long time now, which means this dumb shit thinks he’s fucking _Hana_.

“Actually,” he says when he can talk without hurting himself laughing, “I think havin’ the shiny badge is what gives me the right.” He thinks about it for a second. “An’ for the record I would’ve kicked your ass just fine without one.” After another second, unable to stop himself, “But I’ll be sure to tell the sheriff how keen you are on her bedroom activities. Sure she’ll appreciate it.”

The man’s face goes a dangerous shade of red. “ _You_ —”

The click of a pistol being cocked gets both their attention real quick, though Shisui relaxes a bit when he sees it’s just Itachi, his weapon fixed suddenly on Jiro.

Jiro, Shisui realizes, whose big hand managed to avoid getting totally caught in the cuffs and was going for a knife in his belt.

“Well, shit,” Shisui mutters.

“That will be enough for now,” Itachi says calmly, the deputy badge on his chest glinting in the sunlight. “Drop the knife, Jirobo.”

Jiro does, swearing a blue streak the whole time, and Shisui finishes jamming the cuffs on him with more force than he usually would.

.

“That was careless,” Itachi observes later, when they’ve given their reports and are riding back to the stable, the setting sun turning the sky scarlet around them.

“Can’t blame me for bein’ in a bit of a rush,” Shisui grumbles. “It was hot as fuck out there.”

“Which you of all people should be used to by now.” Itachi sighs. “How you managed to survive all those months without a partner is a mystery to me.”

Shisui smirks at him. “What can I say, Sheriff? I’m full of surprises.”

“And I’m still not a sheriff anymore,” comes the predictable response.

It’s true, technically. Could be that Itachi’ll never have that title again, but Shisui’s got no doubt he’ll find something else to do with that big brain and bigger hero complex of his someday. Maybe even go into politics, much as the thought makes Shisui queasy.

In the meantime here they are, arresting drunks and petty thieves and going back to the gloriously rebuilt stable at night. It ain’t a glamorous life, but it’s a life, and Shisui’s found talking to another person while he’s making the rounds is so much better than just talking to an ornery horse.

Flicker snorts dangerously under him, like he heard Shisui’s traitorous thoughts. Shisui pats his head and promises carrots under his breath: even for a lawman, a little bribery never hurts.

It’s near night by the time they reach home, the first stars starting to glimmer in the darkening sky. They hang up their hats, unsaddle the horses—Itachi’s Storm submitting to brushing more easily than an unforgiving Flicker—and by then Shisui’s stomach is growling. Amazing how good beans, bacon and bannock can sound after a long day’s work.

He turns to ask Itachi if he wants supper—and stops, because Itachi’s sitting on a hay bale with his own handcuffs dangling from his fingers, looking at them with a keen expression Shisui’s long since learned to recognize. All at once his thoughts of food evaporate.

“Anything you wanna share?” he asks. Itachi tilts his head, eyes still fixed on the gleam of metal.

“You know,” he says casually, “we use these on people every day, yet I’ve never had occasion to wear them myself. I wonder if being restricted like that could constitute cruel and unusual punishment.”

His throat’s gone dry all of a sudden. Shisui swallows twice before answering.

“It ain’t that bad,” he says. “Seem to recall I made myself proof of that once or twice.”

“Still,” Itachi muses. “I am a firm believer in firsthand experience.” He meets Shisui’s gaze, a smirk in his voice if not on his face. “Could I ask for your assistance?”

 _Lord have mercy._ “Never let it be said I ain’t willin’ to sacrifice for the job.”

“Truly you are a paragon of virtue,” Itachi says.

“Damn right,” Shisui replies, unable to keep a grin off his face any longer. “But I’m still not a saint, y’know.”

Itachi’s eyes make it look like he’s laughing.

“I’m counting on it,” he says.

Shisui takes a second to send up a fervent thank-you to God or Satan or whoever made it so that he could be standing here, with this person, in this place, in spite of everything else that’s happened. It’s close enough to a prayer that he figures their preacher would be proud, if he didn’t drop dead of shock first.

Then he politely asks God or Satan or whoever to kindly avert their eyes as he moves toward Itachi and closes the distance between them.

.

_The End_

.


End file.
